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The Founding Fathers and Slavery

Even though the issue of slavery is often raised as a discrediting charge against the Founding Fathers, the historical fact is that slavery was not the product of, nor was it an evil introduced by, the Founding Fathers; slavery had been introduced to America nearly two centuries before the Founders. As President of Congress Henry Laurens explained:

I abhor slavery. I was born in a country where slavery had been established by British Kings and Parliaments as well as by the laws of the country ages before my existence. . . . In former days there was no combating the prejudices of men supported by interest; the day, I hope, is approaching when, from principles of gratitude as well as justice, every man will strive to be foremost in showing his readiness to comply with the Golden Rule [“do unto others as you would have them do unto you” Matthew 7:12].¹

Prior to the time of the Founding Fathers, there had been few serious efforts to dismantle the institution of slavery. John Jay identified the point at which the change in attitude toward slavery began:

Prior to the great Revolution, the great majority . . . of our people had been so long accustomed to the practice and convenience of having slaves that very few among them even doubted the propriety and rectitude of it.²

The War for Independence was the turning point in the national attitude–and it was the Founding Fathers who contributed greatly to that change. In fact, many of the Founders vigorously complained against the fact that Great Britain had forcefully imposed upon the Colonies the evil of slavery. For example, Thomas Jefferson heavily criticized that British policy:

He [King George III] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. . . . Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce [that is, he has opposed efforts to prohibit the slave trade].³

Benjamin Franklin, in a 1773 letter to Dean Woodward, confirmed that whenever the Americans had attempted to end slavery, the British government had indeed thwarted those attempts. Franklin explained that . . .

. . . a disposition to abolish slavery prevails in North America, that many of Pennsylvanians have set their slaves at liberty, and that even the Virginia Assembly have petitioned the King for permission to make a law for preventing the importation of more into that colony. This request, however, will probably not be granted as their former laws of that kind have always been repealed.⁴

Further confirmation that even the Virginia Founders were not responsible for slavery, but actually tried to dismantle the institution, was provided by John Quincy Adams (known as the “hell-hound of abolition” for his extensive efforts against that evil). Adams explained:

The inconsistency of the institution of domestic slavery with the principles of the Declaration of Independence was seen and lamented by all the southern patriots of the Revolution; by no one with deeper and more unalterable conviction than by the author of the Declaration himself [Jefferson]. No charge of insincerity or hypocrisy can be fairly laid to their charge. Never from their lips was heard one syllable of attempt to justify the institution of slavery. They universally considered it as a reproach fastened upon them by the unnatural step-mother country [Great Britain] and they saw that before the principles of the Declaration of Independence, slavery, in common with every other mode of oppression, was destined sooner or later to be banished from the earth. Such was the undoubting conviction of Jefferson to his dying day. In the Memoir of His Life, written at the age of seventy-seven, he gave to his countrymen the solemn and emphatic warning that the day was not distant when they must hear and adopt the general emancipation of their slaves.⁵

While Jefferson himself had introduced a bill designed to end slavery,⁶ not all of the southern Founders were opposed to slavery. According to the testimony of Virginians James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, it was the Founders from North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia who most strongly favored slavery.⁷

Yet, despite the support for slavery in those States, the clear majority of the Founders opposed this evil. For instance, when some of the southern pro-slavery advocates invoked the Bible in support of slavery, Elias Boudinot, President of the Continental Congress, responded:

[E]ven the sacred Scriptures had been quoted to justify this iniquitous traffic. It is true that the Egyptians held the Israelites in bondage for four hundred years, . . . but . . . gentlemen cannot forget the consequences that followed: they were delivered by a strong hand and stretched-out arm and it ought to be remembered that the Almighty Power that accomplished their deliverance is the same yesterday, today, and for ever.⁸

Many of the Founding Fathers who had owned slaves as British citizens released them in the years following America’s separation from Great Britain (e.g., George Washington, John Dickinson, Caesar Rodney, William Livingston, George Wythe, John Randolph of Roanoke, and others). Furthermore, many of the Founders had never owned any slaves. For example, John Adams proclaimed, “[M]y opinion against it [slavery] has always been known . . . [N]ever in my life did I own a slave.”⁹

Notice a few additional examples of the strong anti-slavery sentiments held by great numbers of the Founders:

[N]ever in my life did I own a slave.¹⁰ John Adams, Signer of the Declaration, one of only two signers of the Bill of Rights, U. S. President
But to the eye of reason, what can be more clear than that all men have an equal right to happiness? Nature made no other distinction than that of higher or lower degrees of power of mind and body. . . . Were the talents and virtues which Heaven has bestowed on men given merely to make them more obedient drudges? . . . No! In the judgment of heaven there is no other superiority among men than a superiority of wisdom and virtue.¹¹ Samuel Adams, Signer of the Declaration, “Father of the American Revolution”
[W]hy keep alive the question of slavery? It is admitted by all to be a great evil.¹² Charles Carroll, Signer of the Declaration
As Congress is now to legislate for our extensive territory lately acquired, I pray to Heaven that they may build up the system of the government on the broad, strong, and sound principles of freedom. Curse not the inhabitants of those regions, and of the United States in general, with a permission to introduce bondage [slavery].¹³ John Dickinson, Signer of the Constitution; Governor of Pennsylvania
I am glad to hear that the disposition against keeping negroes grows more general in North America. Several pieces have been lately printed here against the practice, and I hope in time it will be taken into consideration and suppressed by the legislature.¹⁴ Benjamin Franklin, Signer of the Declaration, Signer of the Constitution, President of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society
That mankind are all formed by the same Almighty Being, alike objects of his care, and equally designed for the enjoyment of happiness, the Christian religion teaches us to believe, and the political creed of Americans fully coincides with the position. . . . [We] earnestly entreat your serious attention to the subject of slavery – that you will be pleased to countenance the restoration of liberty to those unhappy men who alone in this land of freedom are degraded into perpetual bondage and who . . . are groaning in servile subjection.¹⁵ Benjamin Franklin, Signer of the Declaration, Signer of the Constitution, President of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society
That men should pray and fight for their own freedom and yet keep others in slavery is certainly acting a very inconsistent, as well as unjust and perhaps impious, part.¹⁶ John Jay, President of Continental Congress, Original Chief Justice U. S. Supreme Court
The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. . . . And with what execration [curse] should the statesman be loaded, who permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other. . . . And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.¹⁷ Thomas Jefferson
Christianity, by introducing into Europe the truest principles of humanity, universal benevolence, and brotherly love, had happily abolished civil slavery. Let us who profess the same religion practice its precepts . . . by agreeing to this duty.¹⁸ Richard Henry Lee, President of Continental Congress; Signer of the Declaration
I have seen it observed by a great writer that Christianity, by introducing into Europe the truest principles of humanity, universal benevolence, and brotherly love, had happily abolished civil slavery. Let us, who profess the same religion practice its precepts, and by agreeing to this duty convince the world that we know and practice our truest interests, and that we pay a proper regard to the dictates of justice and humanity!¹⁹ Richard Henry Lee, Signer of the Declaration, Framer of the Bill of Rights
I hope we shall at last, and if it so please God I hope it may be during my life time, see this cursed thing [slavery] taken out. . . . For my part, whether in a public station or a private capacity, I shall always be prompt to contribute my assistance towards effecting so desirable an event.²⁰ William Livingston, Signer of the Constitution; Governor of New Jersey
[I]t ought to be considered that national crimes can only be and frequently are punished in this world by national punishments; and that the continuance of the slave-trade, and thus giving it a national sanction and encouragement, ought to be considered as justly exposing us to the displeasure and vengeance of Him who is equally Lord of all and who views with equal eye the poor African slave and his American master.²¹ Luther Martin, Delegate at Constitution Convention
As much as I value a union of all the States, I would not admit the Southern States into the Union unless they agree to the discontinuance of this disgraceful trade [slavery].²² George Mason, Delegate at Constitutional Convention
Honored will that State be in the annals of history which shall first abolish this violation of the rights of mankind.²³ Joseph Reed, Revolutionary Officer; Governor of Pennsylvania
Domestic slavery is repugnant to the principles of Christianity. . . . It is rebellion against the authority of a common Father. It is a practical denial of the extent and efficacy of the death of a common Savior. It is an usurpation of the prerogative of the great Sovereign of the universe who has solemnly claimed an exclusive property in the souls of men.²⁴ Benjamin Rush, Signer of the Declaration
The commerce in African slaves has breathed its last in Pennsylvania. I shall send you a copy of our late law respecting that trade as soon as it is published. I am encouraged by the success that has finally attended the exertions of the friends of universal freedom and justice.²⁵ Benjamin Rush, Signer of the Declaration, Founder of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, President of the National Abolition Movement
Justice and humanity require it [the end of slavery]–Christianity commands it. Let every benevolent . . . pray for the glorious period when the last slave who fights for freedom shall be restored to the possession of that inestimable right.²⁶ Noah Webster, Responsible for Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution
Slavery, or an absolute and unlimited power in the master over the life and fortune of the slave, is unauthorized by the common law. . . . The reasons which we sometimes see assigned for the origin and the continuance of slavery appear, when examined to the bottom, to be built upon a false foundation. In the enjoyment of their persons and of their property, the common law protects all.²⁷ James Wilson, Signer of the Constitution; U. S. Supreme Court Justice
[I]t is certainly unlawful to make inroads upon others . . . and take away their liberty by no better means than superior power.²⁸ John Witherspoon, Signer of the Declaration

For many of the Founders, their feelings against slavery went beyond words. For example, in 1774, Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush founded America’s first anti-slavery society; John Jay was president of a similar society in New York. In fact, when signer of the Constitution William Livingston heard of the New York society, he, as Governor of New Jersey, wrote them, offering:

I would most ardently wish to become a member of it [the society in New York] and . . . I can safely promise them that neither my tongue, nor my pen, nor purse shall be wanting to promote the abolition of what to me appears so inconsistent with humanity and Christianity. . . . May the great and the equal Father of the human race, who has expressly declared His abhorrence of oppression, and that He is no respecter of persons, succeed a design so laudably calculated to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke.²⁹

Other prominent Founding Fathers who were members of societies for ending slavery included Richard Bassett, James Madison, James Monroe, Bushrod Washington, Charles Carroll, William Few, John Marshall, Richard Stockton, Zephaniah Swift, and many more. In fact, based in part on the efforts of these Founders, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts began abolishing slavery in 1780;³⁰ Connecticut and Rhode Island did so in 1784;³¹ Vermont in 1786;³² New Hampshire in 1792;³³ New York in 1799;³⁴ and New Jersey did so in 1804.³⁵

Additionally, the reason that Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa all prohibited slavery was a Congressional act, authored by Constitution signer Rufus King³⁶ and signed into law by President George Washington,³⁷ which prohibited slavery in those territories.³⁸ It is not surprising that Washington would sign such a law, for it was he who had declared:

I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it [slavery].³⁹

The truth is that it was the Founding Fathers who were responsible for planting and nurturing the first seeds for the recognition of black equality and for the eventual end of slavery. This was a fact made clear by Richard Allen.

Allen had been a slave in Pennsylvania but was freed after he converted his master to Christianity. Allen, a close friend of Benjamin Rush and several other Founding Fathers, went on to become the founder of the A.M.E. Church in America. In an early address “To the People of Color,” he explained:

Many of the white people have been instruments in the hands of God for our good, even such as have held us in captivity, [and] are now pleading our cause with earnestness and zeal.⁴⁰

While much progress was made by the Founders to end the institution of slavery, unfortunately what they began was not fully achieved until generations later. Yet, despite the strenuous effort of many Founders to recognize in practice that “all men are created equal,” charges persist to the opposite. In fact, revisionists even claim that the Constitution demonstrates that the Founders considered one who was black to be only three-fifths of a person.⁴¹ This charge is yet another falsehood. The three-fifths clause was not a measurement of human worth; rather, it was an anti-slavery provision to limit the political power of slavery’s proponents. By including only three-fifths of the total number of slaves in the congressional calculations, Southern States were actually being denied additional pro-slavery representatives in Congress.

Based on the clear records of the Constitutional Convention, two prominent professors explain the meaning of the three-fifths clause:

While much progress was made by the Founders to end the institution of slavery, unfortunately what they began was not fully achieved until generations later. Yet, despite the strenuous effort of many Founders to recognize in practice that “all men are created equal,” charges persist to the opposite. In fact, revisionists even claim that the Constitution demonstrates that the Founders considered one who was black to be only three-fifths of a person. This charge is yet another falsehood. The three-fifths clause was not a measurement of human worth; rather, it was an anti-slavery provision to limit the political power of slavery’s proponents. By including only three-fifths of the total number of slaves in the congressional calculations, Southern States were actually being denied additional pro-slavery representatives in Congress.
It was slavery’s opponents who succeeded in restricting the political power of the South by allowing them to count only three-fifths of their slave population in determining the number of congressional representatives. The three-fifths of a vote provision applied only to slaves, not to free blacks in either the North or South.⁴² Walter Williams

Why do revisionists so often abuse and misportray the three-fifths clause? Professor Walter Williams (himself an African-American) suggested:

Politicians, news media, college professors and leftists of other stripes are selling us lies and propaganda. To lay the groundwork for their increasingly successful attack on our Constitution, they must demean and criticize its authors. As Senator Joe Biden demonstrated during the Clarence Thomas hearings, the framers’ ideas about natural law must be trivialized or they must be seen as racists.⁴³

While this has been only a cursory examination of the Founders and slavery, it is nonetheless sufficient to demonstrate the absurdity of the insinuation that the Founders were a collective group of racists.

Endnotes

¹ Henry Laurens to John Laurens on August 14, 1776, Frank Moore, Materials for History Printed From Original Manuscripts, the Correspondence of Henry Laurens of South Carolina (New York: Zenger Club, 1861), 20.

² John Jay to the English Anti-Slavery Society, June 1788, The Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay, ed. Henry P. Johnston (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1891), III:342.

³ Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Albert Ellery Bergh (Washington, D. C.: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1903), I:34.

⁴ Benjamin Franklin to Rev. Dean Woodward, April 10, 1773, The Works of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Jared Sparks (Boston: Tappan, Whittemore, and Mason, 1839), VIII:42.

⁵ John Quincy Adams, An Oration Delivered Before the Inhabitants of the Town of Newburyport at Their Request on the Sixty-First Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1837 (Newburyport: Charles Whipple, 1837), 50.

⁶ Jefferson, Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Bergh (1903), I:4.

⁷ Jefferson, “Autobiography,” Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Bergh (1903), I:28. See also James Madison, The Papers of James Madison (Washington: Langtree and O’Sullivan, 1840), III:1395; James Madison to Robert Walsh, November 27, 1819, The Writings of James Madison, ed. Gaillard Hunt (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1910), IX:2.

⁸ The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States (Washington, D. C.: Gales and Seaton, 1834), 1st Congress, 2nd Session, 1518. See also George Adams Boyd, Elias Boudinot, Patriot and Statesman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1952), 182.

⁹ John Adams to George Churchman and Jacob Lindley, January 24, 1801, The Works of John Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1854), IX:92-93.

¹⁰ John Adams to George Churchman and Jacob Lindley, January 24, 1801, Works of John Adams, ed. Adams (1854) IX:92.

¹¹ Samuel Adams, An Oration Delivered at the State House, in Philadelphia, to a Very Numerous audience; on Thursday the 1st of August, 1776 (London: E. Johnson, 1776), 4-6.

¹² Charles Carroll to Robert Goodloe Harper, April 23, 1820, Kate Mason Rowland, Life and Correspondence of Charles Carroll of Carrollton (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1898), II:321.

¹³ John Dickinson to George Logan, January 30, 1804, Charles J. Stille, The Life and Times of John Dickinson(Philadelphia: J. P. Lippincott Company, 1891), 324.

¹⁴ Franklin to Mr. Anthony Benezet, August 22, 1772, Works of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Bigelow (1904), 5:356.

¹⁵ Memorial from the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, February 3, 1790, Annals of Congress, ed. Joseph Gales, Sr. (Washington: Gales and Seaton, 1834), 1:1239-1240.

¹⁶ John Jay to the Rev. Dr. Richard Price, September 27, 1785, The Life and Times of John Jay, ed. William Jay (New York: J. & S. Harper, 1833), II:174.

¹⁷ Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia(Philadelphia: Matthew Carey, 1794), 236-237.

¹⁸ Richard Henry Lee (Grandson), Memoir of the Life of Richard Henry Lee (Philadelphia: H. C. Carey and I. Lea, 1825), I:19.

¹⁹ Richard H. Lee (Grandson), Memoir of Richard Henry Lee (1825), 1:17-19.

²⁰ William Livingston to James Pemberton, October 20, 1788, The Papers of William Livingston, ed. Carl E. Prince (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1988), V:358.

²¹ Luther Martin, The Genuine Information Delivered to the Legislature of the State of Maryland Relative to the Proceedings of the General Convention Lately Held at Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Eleazor Oswald, 1788), 57; Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, ed. Jonathan Elliot (Washington, D. C.: 1836), I:374.

²² George Mason, June 15, 1788, Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, ed. Jonathan Elliot (Washington, D. C.: 1836), III:452-454.

²³ William Armor, Lives of the Governors of Pennsylvania (Norwich, CT: T. H. Davis & Co., 1874), 223.

²⁴ Benjamin Rush, Minutes of the Proceedings of a Convention of Delegates from the Abolition Societies Established in Different Parts of the United States Assembled at Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Zachariah Poulson, 1794), 24.

²⁵ Benjamin Rush to Richard Price, October 15, 1785, Letters of Benjamin Rush, ed. L. H. Butterfield (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1951), 1:371.

²⁶ Noah Webster, Effect of Slavery on Morals and Industry (Hartford: Hudson and Goodwin, 1793), 48.

²⁷ James Wilson, The Works of the Honorable James Wilson, ed. Bird Wilson (Philadelphia: Lorenzo Press, 1804), II:488.

²⁸ John Witherspoon, The Works of John Witherspoon (Edinburgh: J. Ogle, 1815), VII:81.

²⁹ William Livingston to the New York Manumission Society, June 26, 1786, The Papers of William Livingston, ed. Carl E. Prince (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1988), V:255.

³⁰ A Constitution or Frame of Government Agreed Upon by the Delegates of the People of the State of Massachusetts-Bay (Boston: Benjamin Edes and Sons, 1780), 7; An Abridgement of the Laws of Pennsylvania, ed. Collinson Read (Philadelphia: 1801), 264-266.

³¹ The Public Statue Laws of the State of Connecticut (Hartford: Hudson and Goodwin, 1808), I:623-625; Rhode Island Session Laws (Providence: Wheeler, 1784), 7-8.

³² The Constitutions of the Sixteen States (Boston: Manning and Loring, 1797), 249, Vermont, 1786.

³³ Constitutions of the Sixteen State (1797), 50, New Hampshire, 1792.

³⁴ Laws of the State of New York, Passed at the Twenty-Second Session, Second Meeting of the Legislature (Albany: Loring Andrew, 1798), 721-723.

³⁵ Laws of the State of New Jersey, Compiled and Published Under the Authority of the Legislature, ed. Joseph Bloomfield (Trenton: James J. Wilson, 1811), 103-105.

³⁶ Rufus King, The Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, ed. Charles King (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1894), I:288-289.

³⁷ August 7, 1789, Acts Passed at a Congress of the United States of America (Hartford: Hudson and Goodwin, 1791), 104.

³⁸ “An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States Northwest of the River Ohio,” Article VI, The Constitutions of the United States (Trenton: Moore and Lake, 1813), 366.

³⁹ George Washington to Robert Morris, April 12, 1786, The Writings of George Washington, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1932), XXVIII:407-408.

⁴⁰ Richard Allen, “Address to the People of Color in the United States,” The Life Experience and Gospel Labors of the Right Rev. Richard Allen (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1983), 73.

⁴¹ Thomas G. West, “Was the American Founding Unjust? The Case of Slavery,” Principles: A Quarterly Review for Teachers of History and Social Science (Claremont, CA: The Claremont Institute Spring/Summer, 1992), 5.

⁴² Walter E. Williams, “Some Fathers Fought Slavery,” Creators Syndicate, Inc. (May 26, 1993).

⁴³ Walter E. Williams, “Some Fathers Fought Slavery,” Creators Syndicate, Inc. (May 26, 1993).

An Article V Convention of the States

By David Barton

Article V of the Constitution provides the means whereby a so-called “Constitutional Convention” can be convened to amend the Constitution of the United States:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution; or on the application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which in either case shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of this Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three-fourths thereof.

If thirty-four (that is, two-thirds) of the states issue a formal call for a convention to propose an amendment(s) to the Constitution, then such a Convention must be assembled. (Any such Convention is not led or supervised by Congress, but rather by delegates selected by the state legislatures.) Some 10,000 amendments to the Constitution have been proposed in Congress,¹ but in two centuries, two-thirds of the states have never requested the same amendment. But that began to change in 1957.

History

Under the growing economic difficulties of the 1940s following World War II and the widespread implementation of Progressive economic policies under President Franklin Roosevelt, Indiana sought to curb uncontrolled congressional spending and growing national debt by issuing the first call for a Balanced-Budget Amendment to the federal Constitution. As federal economic problems only increased across subsequent decades, other states joined the call,² and eventually thirty-four – the required two-thirds – did request such a Convention, but apparently the threshold was not met, for during that same time, some states had rescinded their call for an amendment.³

Some conservatives had begun to loudly warn that if a gathering to write a Balanced Budget Amendment were ever convened, it could result in a “runaway convention.” As proof, they pointed to the original Constitutional Convention, claiming that it had met only for the purpose of repairing the Articles of Confederation but ended up writing a new Constitution instead. It was therefore argued that if a gathering was convened to write a Balanced Budget Amendment, that the entire Constitution could be set aside and replaced with an entirely new one – and that liberals had already written a substitute and were awaiting an opportunity to implement it. (Of course, subsequent experience has proven that Progressives don’t write a new constitution; they simply ignore the old one and have their judges rewrite it through activist decisions.)

I had heard these arguments for years and even repeated them to express my opposition to an Article V “Constitutional Convention,” but I now support such a Convention. Why? Because I personally researched the documents related to Article V and discovered that the portrayal of history I had been told was wrong – and it is a proven lesson that if you get your history wrong, then public policy positions based on that bad history will also be wrong.

The US Constitution

As a point in fact, the 1787 gathering to write the U. S. Constitution was definitely not a runaway convention – the delegates did not ignore their state’s instructions about revising the Articles of Confederation and then come up with a renegade Constitution. This is affirmed by the fact that the states ratified the Constitution after it was written – they supported what occurred at the Convention. Furthermore, history also shows that throughout the construction of American government, the states had full control over their delegates.

For instance, during the Second Continental Congress (which, like the Constitutional Convention, was a gathering outside the normal governmental bodies of the time), Pennsylvania instructed its delegates not to support any separation from Great Britain,⁴ and their delegates followed those instructions. But Pennsylvania later changed its instructions and authorized their delegates to vote with the other states,⁵ and thus for the Declaration of Independence. When several of their delegates ignored those instructions and voted against the Declaration, Pennsylvania recalled them and replaced them with new ones.⁶ Clearly, the states had control of their delegates and could stop any runaway convention.

(There are many excellent resources available to bring an accurate historical perspective to any examination of Article V. See, for example, the historical information at www.conventionofstates.com, particularly under “Convention of States Handbook” and “Opposition Response.”)

Support for a Convention?

So both history and the explicit language of the Constitution make four points evident:

1. The original Constitutional Convention was not a runaway convention
2. The current proposed gathering is not a “Constitutional Convention,” for it is not a gathering to write a constitution; rather, it is a “Convention of the States” convened for the purpose of suggesting a specific constitutional amendment(s) to limit the federal government
3. The Constitution itself specifically stipulates that any such Convention can only “propose Amendments to this Constitution,” not produce a new one
4. The states have extensive authority to control their delegates and prevent them from going afield from the purpose for which they were sent to the convention

One other crucial point that conservative opponents of an Article V Convention have failed to acknowledge is that it does not endanger the Constitution to use the Constitution. The Founders specifically placed Article V into the Constitution as a tool whereby states could enforce federalism and limit federal overreach, and to not use this part of the Constitution for fear of losing the Constitution is like not using the First Amendment for fear of losing the First Amendment, or not using the Second Amendment for fear of losing the Second Amendment, or not using Trial by Jury for fear of losing Trial by Jury. If something is in the Constitution, then conservatives can’t be like Progressives and pick and choose which parts they embrace.

Furthermore, it is time to change our mindset about using the Constitution. Long ago, Founding Father John Jay, an author of the Federalist Papers and the original Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court, wisely advised:

Every member of the State ought diligently to read and to study the constitution of his country, and teach the rising generation to be free. By knowing their rights, they will sooner perceive when they are violated and be the better prepared to defend and assert them.⁷

We have been defending the Constitution. It is now time to assert it.

Assert the Constitution

Significantly, the National War College in Washington, D. C., teaches the brightest American military officers both the philosophy and the tactics necessary not just to engage in war but to win that war. A course central to that training is “The Nine Principles of War,” and offense is one of those key doctrines of war, but defense is not. In fact, defense is only considered a temporary condition during which assets are reorganized in order to go back onto offense. Going on offense, and then sustaining a strong offense, is the key to ultimate victory. It is time for states to go on the offensive to limit the overreach of the federal government.

Bad history not only engenders bad policy, it also produces straw-men arguments that inflame the emotions and limit offensive aggressiveness by raising fears of what MIGHT happen – that if an Article V gathering is convened, it MIGHT turn into a runaway convention, and it MIGHT replace the Constitution with a new one (and it is alleged that George Soros is currently funding such efforts). But we also MIGHT be wiped out by a falling meteor tomorrow afternoon at 3PM; or Hawaii MIGHT experience a blizzard on July 18th; or in the last two years of his presidency, Barack Obama MIGHT become the greatest constitutional conservative in American history. There are too many “MIGHTS” – too much fear – and fear keeps citizens on defense rather than offense. Because of what MIGHT happen, then nothing is done.

By the way, suppose for a moment that all of history and the explicit language of the Constitution is wrong, and that the critics’ worst fears do come to pass, and that the Convention does write an entirely new Constitution. What then? The new document could take effect only after it was ratified by BOTH bodies of the legislature in three-fourths, or 38 of the states. Thus, it takes only one legislative body in thirteen different states – either the house or the senate – to stop such any such new document.

There are 99 state legislative chambers in America (Nebraska has a unicameral legislature with only one body), so then this means that 87 of the 99 legislative bodies would have to vote to dump the current Constitution before a new one could be implemented. No Progressive – no matter how optimistic – can identify anywhere close to 87 state legislative bodies that would support such a plan. Similarly, no conservative – no matter how pessimistic – should have any trouble naming 13 States in which either the House or Senate would refuse to ratify and thereby put that state in the “no” column. Again, only 13 States saying “no” would stop such a plan. But it will not come to this, for the Constitution explicitly stipulates that an Article V gathering can only propose amendments to the Constitution, not replace it.

Statement

These are some of the many reasons why I support an Article V Convention of the States. It is time to reject straw-men arguments, relearn our history, and embrace what the Constitution authorizes. It is time to act on the Constitution and limit the federal government before it becomes so large and intrusive that it can no longer be restrained.

I was recently asked to provide a letter of support for a state legislature that was voting on a call for an Article V Convention of the States. Here are my comments to that body:

Fellow Patriots,
It is exciting to see such a renewed interest in basic constitutional principles. Liberty lovers across America are studying their past in order to find ways to stop our federal government’s explosive growth and sprint towards socialism.
Fortunately, our Founding Fathers, with their thorough understanding of human nature, created constitutional means to restrain the federal government when it exceeded its jurisdiction. One specific means was the Constitution’s Article V amendment process by means of a Convention of the States. This is a proper solution.
We have not come to this conclusion lightly. Like many of our conservative friends, we initially avoided this constitutionally-specified process due to a fear of what might occur, or what could happen. But after years of research and studying the Founders’ original intent for this amendment process – and after years of witnessing an unconstitutional reshaping of our federal government – we are confident that this is the correct course of action.
The Federalist Papers declare that the Constitution specifically furnishes each part of government “with constitutional arms” for its own “effectual powers of self-defense.” One such arm of self-defense that the Constitution gives to the states is an Article V Convention of States. For states to refuse to use this tool would be like going into a street fight, but refusing to use one of your biggest and most effective weapons. And it is illogical to consider the use of any constitutional provision as a threat to the Constitution. It makes as much sense as violating the free-market system to save it, or breaking health care to fix it.
We urge you to support all of the Constitution, and thus the efforts of the Convention of States to pass their extremely well-thought-out and strategic legislation in your home state and thus join us in a call to restore our constitutional republic.
David Barton
Founder and President, WallBuilders

Endnotes

¹ “Measures Proposed to Amend the Constitution,” Senate.gov (accessed on June 5, 2014).

² Russell Caplan, Constitutional Brinkmanship: Amending the Constitution by National Convention (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 78-89. So far, 34 states have issued such a call, including Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wyoming, Michigan, and Ohio.

³ “List of Rescissions of Article V Convention Applications,” Wikipedia (accessed on June 5, 2014). Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, North Dakota, and Georgia have resubmitted calls for convention starting in 2011. The rescinded states include Alabama (rescinded 1988; new call 2011); Arizona (rescinded 2003); Florida (rescinded 1988 ; new call issued 2010, renewed in 2014 with 2 other provisos); Georgia (rescinded 2004; new call issued 2014); Idaho (rescinded 1999); Louisiana (rescinded 1990; new call issued 2008; renewed in 2011 and 2014); New Hampshire (rescinded 2010; new call issued 2012); North Dakota (rescinded 2001; new call issued 2011); Oklahoma (rescinded 2009); Oregon (rescinded 1999); South Carolina (rescinded 2004); South Dakota (rescinded 2010); Tennessee (rescinded 2010; new call issued 2014); Utah (rescinded 2001); Virginia (rescinded 2004); and Wyoming (rescinded 2009).

⁴ Peter Force, American Archives: Four Series. Containing a Documentary History of the English Colonies in North America, from the King’s Message to Parliament of March 7, 1774, to the Declaration of Independence (Washington: M. St Clair Clarke & Peter Force, 1840), III:1792-1793, instructions to the Delegates from the Province [of Pennsylvania] in Congress, November 9, 1775.

⁵ Force, American Archives (1840), VI:862-863, instructions to the Delegates [of Pennsylvania] in Congress, June 14, 1776.

⁶ Thomas F. Gordon, The History of Pennsylvania from Its Discovery by Europeans to the Declaration of Independence in 1776 (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea, & Carey, 1829), 537-538. See also Force, American Archives (1848), I:1586, Pennsylvania’s appointment of new delegates, July 20, 1776.

⁷ John Jay, The Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay, ed. Henry P. Johnston (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1890), I:163-164, Charge to the Grand Jury of Ulster County, September 9, 1777.

Letter to Pastors about Welfare Comment on Beck Radio Show

Background

Immediately following the U. S. Supreme Court’s decisions on homosexual marriage in June 2013, David Barton was a guest on a popular national radio program. He pointed out that by the striking down of DOMA (the Defense of Marriage Act) and thus the federal definition of what constitutes a marriage, there would be three immediate repercussions.

The first would be in the military, for even when there still was a definition of marriage, chaplains were being pressured to violate their own religious conscience and perform homosexual marriages; that would only increase with the removal of DOMA.

The second would be in the State Department, for even when the definition of marriage was still in place, it was pressuring foreign nations to accept homosexual marriage in order to receive U. S. foreign aid; that would only increase following the Court’s decision.

The third would be in those states that had already legalized homosexual marriage. Already in those state, citizens who because of their religious beliefs had refused to participate in activities associated with homosexual marriages (e.g., photograph the wedding, provide the cake or flowers, make available a religious wedding chapel, etc.) were already being legally persecuted by those states, including the revoking of their tax-exempt statuses.

The radio host then asked David when pastors were going to stand up and walk away from their government-granted tax exemptions and simply stand for Biblical truth. In the course of explaining that many pastors were doing that, but most were not, David mentioned that some pastors were simply on church welfare. A few pastors took objection to that phrase, so David wrote the piece below to clarify his use of that term.

❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋

Statement by David Barton

It was brought to my attention that there were some issues with statements I recently made on a national radio program. I regret any misunderstanding that may have occurred over my reference to “welfare” as associated with pastors. There are multiple meanings of the word, and some may have assumed it to be used in the context of laziness, which certainly was not my intent. Others may have made other assumptions unrelated to the way that I was using the word “welfare.” While the Godly pastors that I know are incredibly hard working in a very difficult job, I used the term “church welfare” to refer to an entirely different phenomenon: those pastors who neither believe in nor stand up for Biblical principles but nevertheless receive a check for not fulfilling their Biblical responsibilities as a pastor.

I meant it in the historic European sense of the term – such as with Anglican pastors in England who received their salary and would not jeopardize it by making anyone uncomfortable by teaching what the Bible said; the same with many of the Scandinavian nations, not to mention (as confirmed by Martin Niemoller and Dietrich Bonheoffer) even Nazi Germany. These pastors received their checks but did not hold forth Biblical teachings and did nothing to challenge or help move people or the culture in a Biblical direction.

Sadly, from a statistical standpoint, almost 90 percent of current American pastors do NOT believe that the Bible is God’s infallible Word, or that it applies to every aspect of life, or even that Jesus is Divine (see documentation below). We now have entire denominations of millions that endorse homosexual marriage, oppose Israel’s right to exist and defend itself, don’t oppose and in fact even support abortion, assert that God’s Word is not inspired, teach that one’s own effort can get him to heaven, etc. In fact, national polling affirms that in more than seventy categories, pollsters now find no statistical difference in the moral behavior of professed Christians and that of non-believers. Indisputably, much of this can be attributed to the teachings that Christians receive – or rather, don’t receive – at church. Nevertheless, these pastors receive a salary for teaching millions of people the exact opposite of what God’s Word says in so many areas – or in their efforts to not offend anyone, they water it down until it is no longer a clear and unequivocal message.

My objection therefore occurs when the concern for one’s salary alters the clarity or strength of message, or when someone takes a salary but does not hold forth even the most basic tenets of the Bible (which is the indisputable statistical condition of most of the Christian church in America today). However, I definitely do not include the ten percent of Biblical churches and pastors in the category of “church welfare.”

Finally, let me point out that I know the scope and demographics of the audience that listens to the program on which I appeared and who heard my interview; I appear on that program and network regularly. That audience knows my full body of work – how highly supportive of Biblical pastors that I have consistently been, and how that for nearly two decades, including some five years on that specific program, I have championed not only the role but also the important position of Biblical pastors, and they therefore understood my intent.

I hope that this clears up any confusion, but please be aware that currently, ministers who believe in and teach the full Bible are in the extreme minority right now in America. We need pastors to get back to the Acts 4:19-20 model of boldly proclaiming the truth of God’s Word without fear of man, their congregation, or their paycheck.

Again, my apologies for any misunderstanding with my use of the phrase “church welfare.” May God continue to prosper you and your endeavors for Him!
David Barton

P. S. Please check out the pledge we encourage pastors to sign on our Black Robe Regiment website (brr.wallbuilders.com), where we also provide tools to help pastors take a bold and informed stand for Biblical principles as related to every facet of culture.

P. S. S. By the way, if anyone wonders about the statement above that “almost 90 percent of current American pastors do NOT believe . . .”, here is some information on the documentation for that statistic.
Consider information from the Center for the Study of American Culture and Faith.¹ This organization identifies churches that are considered to be a “culturally-impacting church” – that is, churches that:

Believe the Bible is God’s holy infallible Word
Preach and teach the Bible
Believe life is sacred
Believe marriage is only between one man and one woman
Encourage the congregation to vote Biblical values
Believe that prayer is key
Believe that the church is responsible to be actively engaged in helping the community

Significantly, each day the Center individually contacts some 500 of America’s more than 350,000 churches to identify those which hold these seven beliefs. Of the tens of thousands of churches they have thus far contacted, only about ten percent embrace these positions. Having currently identified over 6,000 of these Biblically-conservative churches, noted national pollster George Barna conducts surveys solely among this group. Consider recent findings:

97% of theologically conservative pastors believe that the Bible provides principles that relate to the morality of abortion
95% say the Scriptures offer moral principles related to same-sex marriage
92% argue that the Bible describes principles regarding the morality of environmental care
71% say that there are moral principles related to immigration policy in God’s Word²

Nevertheless:
In 2012 – an ideologically-charged election year in which the four issues in question were in the forefront of political discussions – none of those four issues was preached on by even half of the theologically-conservative pastors.³

So even though these pastors strongly believed that the Bible speaks to these issues, they themselves refused to publicly speak about those issues. In fact:

The survey found that, of the four issues, abortion was most often the subject of a sermon in a theologically-conservative church in 2012. Overall, 42% of the surveyed pastors preached about abortion, which was higher than the numbers who preached about same-sex marriage (36%), environmental care (21%), or immigration issues (10%). In 2013, even fewer pastors plan to preach on these four issues. While 42% of those pastors preached on abortion in 2012, pastors’ responses suggest that the figure is likely to drop to 34% in 2013. Same-sex marriage was taught about from 36% of these pulpits in 2012, but will likely drop to 26% in 2013. The frequency of preaching about environmental care is expected to drop almost by half (from 21% to 12%). Only immigration is anticipated to hold steady (10% in 2012, 10% planned in 2013).⁴

So, only around ten percent of America’s churches believe that the Bible is true and provides guidance on such issues, but only about one-third of that ten percent – or only about 3-4 percent of total churches nationally – will speak publicly about these issues. The CEO of the Center conducting the polling accurately observed, “Without such guidance [from pastors], the mass media takes the lead on providing the worldview that shapes cultural choices, producing lowest common denominator lifestyles and spineless leadership.”⁵

Endnotes

¹ “Center for the Study of American Culture and Faith,” culturefaith.com.
² “Survey Says: Conservative Pastors Don’t Always Preach What They Practice,” culturefaith.com, June 10, 2013.
³ “Survey Says: Conservative Pastors Don’t Always Preach What They Practice,” culturefaith.com, June 10, 2013.
⁴ “Survey Says: Conservative Pastors Don’t Always Preach What They Practice,” culturefaith.com, June 10, 2013.
⁵ “Survey Says: Conservative Pastors Don’t Always Preach What They Practice,” culturefaith.com, June 10, 2013.

* This article concerns a historical issue and may not have updated information.

America’s Most Biblically-Hostile U. S. President

When one observes President Obama’s unwillingness to accommodate America’s four-century long religious conscience protection through his attempts to require Catholics to go against their own doctrines and beliefs, one is tempted to say that he is anti-Catholic. But that characterization would not be correct. Although he singled out Catholics, he equally targeted traditional Protestant beliefs. So since he has attacked Catholics and Protestants, one is tempted to say that he is anti-Christian. But that, too, would be inaccurate. He has been equally disrespectful in his appalling treatment of religious Jews in general and Israel in particular. So perhaps the most accurate description of his antipathy toward Catholics, Protestants, religious Jews, and the Jewish nation would be to characterize him as anti-Biblical. And then when his hostility toward Biblical people of faith is contrasted with his preferential treatment of Muslims and Muslim nations, it further strengthens the accuracy of the anti-Biblical descriptor. In fact, there have been numerous clearly documented times when his pro-Islam positions have been the cause of his anti-Biblical actions.

Listed below in chronological order are (1) numerous records of his attacks on Biblical persons or organizations; (2) examples of the hostility toward Biblical faith that have become evident in the past three years in the Obama-led military; (3) a listing of his open attacks on Biblical values; and finally (4) a listing of numerous incidents of his preferential deference for Islam’s activities and positions, including letting his Islamic advisors guide and influence his hostility toward people of Biblical faith.

1. Acts of hostility toward people of Biblical faith:

December 2009-2016 – The annual White House Christmas cards, rather than focusing on Christmas or faith, instead highlight things such as the family dogs. And the White House Christmas tree ornaments include figures such as Mao Tse-Tung and a drag queen. [1]
May 2016 – President Obama appoints a transgender to the Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships — an act of overt disdain and hostility toward traditional faith religions. [2]
September 2015 – For White House and State Department dinners, the president deliberately invites guests that he knows will be offensive to the Pope and who openly opposed his message, but he and the State Department very carefully avoid inviting guests that oppose or would offended the dictators of countries such as Cuba and China. [3]
June 2013 – The Obama Department of Justice defunds a Young Marines chapter in Louisiana because their oath mentioned God, and another youth program because it permits a voluntary student-led prayer. [4]
February 2013 – The Obama Administration announces that the rights of religious conscience for individuals will not be protected under the Affordable Care Act. [5]
January 2013 – Pastor Louie Giglio is pressured to remove himself from praying at the inauguration after it is discovered he once preached a sermon supporting the Biblical definition of marriage.[6]
February 2012 – The Obama administration forgives student loans in exchange for public service, but announces it will no longer forgive student loans if the public service is related to religion. [7]
January 2012 – The Obama administration argues that the First Amendment provides no protection for churches and synagogues in hiring their pastors and rabbis. [8]
December 2011 – The Obama administration denigrates other countries’ religious beliefs as an obstacle to radical homosexual rights. [9]
November 2011 – President Obama opposes inclusion of President Franklin Roosevelt’s famous D-Day Prayer in the WWII Memorial. [10]
November 2011 – Unlike previous presidents, Obama studiously avoids any religious references in his Thanksgiving speech. [11]
August 2011 – The Obama administration releases its new health care rules that override religious conscience protections for medical workers in the areas of abortion and contraception. [12]
April 2011 – For the first time in American history, Obama urges passage of a non-discrimination law that does not contain hiring protections for religious groups, forcing religious organizations to hire according to federal mandates without regard to the dictates of their own faith, thus eliminating conscience protection in hiring. [13]
February 2011 – Although he filled posts in the State Department, for more than two years Obama did not fill the post of religious freedom ambassador, an official that works against religious persecution across the world; he filled it only after heavy pressure from the public and from Congress. [14]
January 2011 – After a federal law was passed to transfer a WWI Memorial in the Mojave Desert to private ownership, the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that the cross in the memorial could continue to stand, but the Obama administration refused to allow the land to be transferred as required by law, and refused to allow the cross to be re-erected as ordered by the Court. [15]
November 2010 – Obama misquotes the National Motto, saying it is “E pluribus unum” rather than “In God We Trust” as established by federal law. [16]
October 19, 2010 – Obama begins deliberately omitting the phrase about “the Creator” when quoting the Declaration of Independence – an omission he has made on no less than seven occasions. [17]
May 2009 – Obama declines to host services for the National Prayer Day (a day established by federal law) at the White House. [18]
April 2009 – When speaking at Georgetown University, Obama orders that a monogram symbolizing Jesus’ name be covered when he is making his speech. [19]
April 2009 – In a deliberate act of disrespect, Obama nominated three pro-abortion ambassadors to the Vatican; of course, the pro-life Vatican rejected all three. [20]
February 2009 – Obama announces plans to revoke conscience protection for health workers who refuse to participate in medical activities that go against their beliefs, and fully implements the plan in February 2011. [21]
April 2008 – Obama speaks disrespectfully of Christians, saying they “cling to guns or religion” and have an “antipathy to people who aren’t like them.” [22]

2. Acts of hostility from the Obama-led military toward people of Biblical faith:

October 2016 – Obama threatens to veto a defense bill over religious protections contained in it.[23]
June 2016 – A military prayer breakfast whose speaker was highly decorated Delta Force Lt. General Jerry Boykin (ret) was cancelled because Boykin was a traditional value Christian who has voiced his support for natural marriage and his opposition to Islamic extremism. (The atheist critic behind the cancellation had complained that Boykin as a “homophobic, Islamophobic, fundamentalist Christian extremist.”)[24]
April 2016 – At the orders of a commander, a 33-year Air Force veteran was forcibly and physically removed by four other airmen because he attempted to use the word “God” in a retirement speech.[25]
February 2016 – After a complaint was received, a Bible was removed from a display inside a Veterans Clinic.[26]
March 2015 – A decorated Navy chaplain was prohibited from fulfilling his duty of comforting the family (or any member of the unit) after the loss of a sailor because it was feared that he would say something about faith and God. He was even banned from the base on the day of the sailor’s memorial service. [27]
March 2015 – A highly decorated Navy SEAL chaplain was relieved of duty for providing counseling that contained religious views on things such as faith, marriage, and sexuality. [28]
June 2014 – Official U. S. government personnel, both civilian and military, in Bahrain (a small Arabic nation near Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran) must wear clothing that facilitates the religious observance of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. [29]
March 2014 – Maxell Air Force Base suddenly bans Gideons from handing out Bibles to willing recruits, a practice that had been occurring for years previously. [30]
December 2013 – A naval facility required that two nativity scenes — scenes depicting the event that caused Christmas to be declared a national federal holiday — be removed from the base dining hall and be confined to the base chapel, thus disallowing the open public acknowledgment of this national federal holiday. [30]
December 2013 – An Air Force base that allowed various public displays ordered the removal of one simply because it contained religious content. [32]
October 2013 – A counter-intelligence briefing at Fort Hood tells soldiers that evangelical Christians are a threat to Americans and that for a soldier to donate to such a group “was punishable under military regulations.” [33]
October 2013 – Catholic priests hired to serve as military chaplains are prohibited from performing Mass services at base chapels during the government financial shutdown. When they offered to freely do Mass for soldiers, without regard to whether or not the chaplains were receiving pay, they are still denied permission to do so. [34]
October 2013 – The Air Force Academy, in response to a complaint from Mikey Weinstein’s Military Religious Freedom Foundation, makes “so help me God” optional in cadets’ honor oath. [35]
August 2013 – A Department of Defense military training manual teaches soldiers that people who talk about “individual liberties, states’ rights, and how to make the world a better place” are “extremists.” It also lists the Founding Fathers — those “colonists who sought to free themselves from British rule” — as examples of those involved in “extremist ideologies and movements.” [36]
August 2013 – A Senior Master Sergeant was removed from his position and reassigned because he told his openly lesbian squadron commander that she should not punish a staff sergeant who expressed his views in favor of traditional marriage. [37]
August 2013 – The military does not provide heterosexual couples specific paid leave to travel to a state just for the purpose of being married, but it did extend these benefits to homosexual couples who want to marry, thus giving them preferential treatment not available to heterosexuals. [38]
August 2013 – The Air Force, in the midst of having launched a series of attacks against those expressing traditional religious or moral views, invited a drag queen group to perform at a base. [39]
July 2013 – When an Air Force sergeant with years of military service questioned a same-sex marriage ceremony performed at the Air Force Academy’s chapel, he received a letter of reprimand telling him that if he disagreed, he needed to get out of the military. His current six-year reenlistment was then reduced to only one-year, with the notification that he “be prepared to retire at the end of this year.” [40]
July 2013 – An Air Force chaplain who posted a website article on the importance of faith and the origin of the phrase “There are no atheists in foxholes” was officially ordered to remove his post because some were offended by the use of that famous World War II phrase.[41]
June 2013 – The U. S. Air Force, in consultation with the Pentagon, removed an inspirational painting that for years has been hanging at Mountain Home Air Force Base because its title was “Blessed Are The Peacemakers” — a phrase from Matthew 5:9 in the Bible. [42]
June 2013 – The Obama administration “strongly objects” to a Defense Authorization amendment to protect the constitutionally-guaranteed religious rights of soldiers and chaplains, claiming that it would have an “adverse effect on good order, discipline, morale, and mission accomplishment.” [43]
June 2013 – At a joint base in New Jersey, a video was made, based on a Super Bowl commercial, to honor First Sergeants. It stated: “On the eighth day, God looked down on His creation and said, ‘I need someone who will take care of the Airmen.’ So God created a First Sergeant.” Because the video mentioned the word “God,” the Air Force required that it be taken down. [44]
June 2013 – An Army Master Sergeant is reprimanded, threatened with judicial action, and given a bad efficiency report, being told he was “no longer a team player,” because he voiced his support of traditional marriage at his own promotion party. [45]
May 2013 – The Pentagon announces that “Air Force members are free to express their personal religious beliefs as long as it does not make others uncomfortable. “Proselytizing (inducing someone to convert to one’s faith) goes over that line,” [46] affirming if a sharing of faith makes someone feel uncomfortable that it could be a court-marital offense [47] — the military equivalent of a civil felony.
May 2013 – An Air Force officer was actually made to remove a personal Bible from his own desk because it “might” appear that he was condoning the particular religion to which he belonged. [48]
April 2013 – Officials briefing U.S. Army soldiers placed “Evangelical Christianity” and “Catholicism” in a list that also included Al-Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood, and Hamas as examples of “religious extremism.” [49]
April 2013 – The U.S. Army directs troops to scratch off and paint over tiny Scripture verse references that for decades had been forged into weapon scopes. [50]
April 2013 – The Air Force creates a “religious tolerance” policy but consults only a militant atheist group to do so — a group whose leader has described military personnel who are religious as ‘spiritual rapists’ and ‘human monsters’ [51] and who also says that soldiers who proselytize are guilty of treason and sedition and should be punished to hold back a “tidal wave of fundamentalists.” [52]
January 2013 – President Obama announced his opposition to a provision in the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act protecting the rights of conscience for military chaplains. [53]
June 2012 – Bibles for the American military have been printed in every conflict since the American Revolution, but the Obama Administration revokes the long-standing U. S. policy of allowing military service emblems to be placed on those military Bibles. [54]
May 2012 – The Obama administration opposed legislation to protect the rights of conscience for military chaplains who do not wish to perform same-sex marriages in violation of their strongly-held religious beliefs. [55]
April 2012 – A checklist for Air Force Inns will no longer include ensuring that a Bible is available in rooms for those who want to use them. [56]
February 2012 – The U. S. Military Academy at West Point disinvites three star Army general and decorated war hero Lieutenant General William G. (“Jerry”) Boykin (retired) from speaking at an event because he is an outspoken Christian. [57]
February 2012 – The Air Force removes “God” from the patch of Rapid Capabilities Office (the word on the patch was in Latin: Dei). [58]
February 2012 – The Army ordered Catholic chaplains not to read a letter to parishioners that their archbishop asked them to read. [59]
November 2011 – The Air Force Academy rescinds support for Operation Christmas Child, a program to send holiday gifts to impoverished children across the world, because the program is run by a Christian charity. [60]
November 2011 – President Obama opposes inclusion of President Franklin Roosevelt’s famous D-Day Prayer in the WWII Memorial. [61]
November 2011 – Even while restricting and disapprobating Christian religious expressions, the Air Force Academy pays $80,000 to add a Stonehenge-like worship center for pagans, druids, witches and Wiccans at the Air Force Academy. [62]
September 2011 – Air Force Chief of Staff prohibits commanders from notifying airmen of programs and services available to them from chaplains. [63]
September 2011 – The Army issues guidelines for Walter Reed Medical Center stipulating that “No religious items (i.e. Bibles, reading materials and/or facts) are allowed to be given away or used during a visit.” [64]
August 2011 – The Air Force stops teaching the Just War theory to officers in California because the course is taught by chaplains and is based on a philosophy introduced by St. Augustine in the third century AD – a theory long taught by civilized nations across the world (except now, America). [65]
June 2011 – The Department of Veterans Affairs forbids references to God and Jesus during burial ceremonies at Houston National Cemetery. [66]
January 2010 – Because of “concerns” raised by the Department of Defense, tiny Bible verse references that had appeared for decades on scopes and gunsights were removed. [67]

3. Acts of hostility toward Biblical values:

October 2015 – The administration attempts to pick opponents for court cases dealing with Obamacare contraception mandate. [68]
March 2014 – The Obama administration seeks funding for every type of sex-education — except that which reflects traditional moral values. [69]
August 2013 – Non-profit charitable hospitals, especially faith-based ones, will face large fines or lose their tax-exempt status if they don’t comply with new strangling paperwork requirements related to giving free treatment to poor clients who do not have Obamacare insurance coverage. [70] Ironically, the first hospital in America was founded as a charitable institution in 1751 by Benjamin Franklin, and its logo was the Good Samaritan, with Luke 10:35 inscribed below him: “Take care of him, and I will repay thee,” being designed specifically to offer free medical care to the poor. [71] Benjamin Franklin’s hospital would likely be fined unless he placed more resources and funds into paperwork rather than helping the poor under the new faith-hostile policy of the Obama administration.
August 2013 – USAID, a federal government agency, shut down a conference in South Korea the night before it was scheduled to take place because some of the presentations were not pro-abortion but instead presented information on abortion complications, including the problems of “preterm births, mental health issues, and maternal mortality” among women giving birth who had previous abortions. [72]
June 2013 – The Obama Administration finalizes requirements that under the Obamacare insurance program, employers must make available abortion-causing drugs, regardless of the religious conscience objections of many employers and even despite the directive of several federal courts to protect the religious conscience of employers. [73]
April 2013 – The United States Agency for Internal Development (USAID), an official foreign policy agency of the U.S. government, begins a program to train homosexual activists in various countries around the world to overturn traditional marriage and anti-sodomy laws, targeting first those countries with strong Catholic influences, including Ecuador, Honduras, and Guatemala. [74]
December 2012 – Despite having campaigned to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, President Obama once again suspends the provisions of the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 which requires the United States to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to move the American Embassy there. [75]
July 2012 – The Pentagon, for the first time, allows service members to wear their uniforms while marching in a parade – specifically, a gay pride parade in San Diego. [76]
October 2011 – The Obama administration eliminates federal grants to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for their extensive programs that aid victims of human trafficking because the Catholic Church is anti-abortion. [77]
September 2011 – The Pentagon directs that military chaplains may perform same-sex marriages at military facilities in violation of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. [78]
July 2011 – Obama allows homosexuals to serve openly in the military, reversing a policy originally instituted by George Washington in March 1778. [79]
March 2011 – The Obama administration refuses to investigate videos showing Planned Parenthood helping alleged sex traffickers get abortions for victimized underage girls. [80]
February 2011 – Obama directs the Justice Department to stop defending the federal Defense of Marriage Act. [81]
September 2010 – The Obama administration tells researchers to ignore a judge’s decision striking down federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. [82]
August 2010 – The Obama administration Cuts funding for 176 abstinence education programs. [83]
July 2010 – The Obama administration uses federal funds in violation of federal law to get Kenya to change its constitution to include abortion. [84]
September 16, 2009 – The Obama administration appoints as EEOC Commissioner Chai Feldblum, who asserts that society should “not tolerate” any “private beliefs,” including religious beliefs, if they may negatively affect homosexual “equality.” [85]
July 2009 – The Obama administration illegally extends federal benefits to same-sex partners of Foreign Service and Executive Branch employees, in direction violation of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. [86]
May 2009 – The White House budget eliminates all funding for abstinence-only education and replaces it with “comprehensive” sexual education, repeatedly proven to increase teen pregnancies and abortions. [87] He continues the deletion in subsequent budgets. [88]
May 2009 – Obama officials assemble a terrorism dictionary calling pro-life advocates violent and charging that they use racism in their “criminal” activities. [89]
March 2009 – The Obama administration shut out pro-life groups from attending a White House-sponsored health care summit. [90]
March 2009 – Obama orders taxpayer funding of embryonic stem cell research. [91]
March 2009 – Obama gave $50 million for the UNFPA, the UN population agency that promotes abortion and works closely with Chinese population control officials who use forced abortions and involuntary sterilizations. [92]
January 2009 – Obama lifts restrictions on U.S. government funding for groups that provide abortion services or counseling abroad, forcing taxpayers to fund pro-abortion groups that either promote or perform abortions in other nations. [93]
January 2009 – President Obama’s nominee for deputy secretary of state asserts that American taxpayers are required to pay for abortions and that limits on abortion funding are unconstitutional. [94]

4. Acts of preferentialism for Islam:

April – September 2015 – The administration negotiates a deal to stop economic sanctions of Iran because of nuclear power development, despite the warnings and concern of Israel. [95]
February 2012 – The Obama administration makes effulgent apologies for Korans being burned by the U. S. military, [96] but when Bibles were burned by the military, numerous reasons were offered why it was the right thing to do. [97]
October 2011 – Obama’s Muslim advisers block Middle Eastern Christians’ access to the White House. [98]
August 2010 – Obama speaks with great praise of Islam and condescendingly of Christianity. [99]
August 2010 – Obama went to great lengths to speak out on multiple occasions on behalf of building an Islamic mosque at Ground Zero, while at the same time he was silent about a Christian church being denied permission to rebuild at that location. [100]
April 2010 – Christian leader Franklin Graham is disinvited from the Pentagon’s National Day of Prayer Event because of complaints from the Muslim community. [101]
April 2010 – The Obama administration requires rewriting of government documents and a change in administration vocabulary to remove terms that are deemed offensive to Muslims, including jihad, jihadists, terrorists, radical Islamic, etc. [102]
May 2009 – While Obama does not host any National Day of Prayer event at the White House, he does host White House Iftar dinners in honor of Ramadan. [103]
2010 – While every White House traditionally issues hundreds of official proclamations and statements on numerous occasions, this White House avoids traditional Biblical holidays and events but regularly recognizes major Muslim holidays, as evidenced by its 2010 statements on Ramadan, Eid-ul-Fitr, Hajj, and Eid-ul-Adha. [104]

Many of these actions are literally unprecedented – this is the first time they have happened in four centuries of American history. The hostility of President Obama toward Biblical faith and values is without equal from any previous American president.

This relates to an issue that is not current as of 2024.

Endnotes

[1] Todd Starnes, “No Christmas in White House Holiday Card,” Fox News Radio, 2011; Todd Starnes, “White House “Holiday” Card Spotlights Dog, Not Christmas,” Fox News Radio, 2012; “White House Christmas Decor Featuring Mao Zedong Comes Under Fire,” Fox News, December 24, 2009.

[2] Billy Hallowell, “Obama Appoints Transgender Leader to Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships,” The Blaze, May 19, 2016.

[3] Jonah Goldberg, “Obama Respects Dictators More Than Popes,” National Review, September 19, 2015.

[4] Todd Starnes, “DOJ Defunds At-Risk Youth Programs over “God” Reference,” Townhall, June 25, 2013.

[5] Steven Ertelt, “Obama Admin’s HHS Mandate Revision Likely Excludes Hobby Lobby,” LifeNews.com, February 1, 2013; Dan Merica, “Obama proposal would let religious groups opt-out of contraception mandate,” CNN, February 1, 2013.

[6] Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “Minister Backs Out of Speech at Inaugural,” New York Times, January 10, 2013; Eric Marrapodi, “Giglio bows out of inauguration over sermon on gays,” CNN, January 10, 2013.

[7] Audrey Hudson, “Obama administration religious service for student loan forgiveness,” Human Events, February 15, 2012.

[8] Ted Olson, “Church Wins Firing Case at Supreme Court,” Christianity Today, January 11, 2012.

[9] Hillary Rodham Clinton, “Remarks in Recognition of International Human Rights Day,” U.S. Department of State, December 6, 2011.

[10] Todd Starns, “Obama Administration Opposes FDR Prayer at WWII Memorial,” Fox News, November 4, 2011.

[11] Joel Siegel, “Obama Omits God From Thanksgiving Speech, Riles Critics,” ABC News, November 25, 2011.

[12] Chuck Donovan, “HHS’s New Health Guidelines Trample on Conscience,” Heritage Foundation, August 2, 2011.

[13] Chris Johnson, “ENDA passage effort renewed with Senate introduction,” Washington Blade, April 15, 2011.

[14] Marrianne Medlin, “Amid criticism, President Obama moves to fill vacant religious ambassador post,” Catholic News Agency, February 9, 2011; Thomas F. Farr, “Undefender of the Faith,” Foreign Policy, April 5, 2012.

[15] LadyImpactOhio, “ Feds sued by Veterans to allow stolen Mojave Desert Cross to be rebuilt,” Red State, January 14, 2011.

[16] “Remarks by the President at the University of Indonesia in Jakarta, Indonesia,” The White House, November 10, 2010.

[17] Meredith Jessup, “Obama Continues to Omit ‘Creator’ From Declaration of Independence,” The Blaze, October 19, 2010.

[18] Johanna Neuman, “Obama end Bush-era National Prayer Day Service at White House,” Los Angeles Times, May 7, 2009.

[19] Jim Lovino, “Jesus Missing From Obama’s Georgetown Speech,” NBC Washington, April 17, 2009.

[20] Chris McGreal, “Vatican vetoes Barack Obama’s nominees for U.S. Ambassador,” The Guardian, April 14, 2009.

[21] Aliza Marcus, “Obama to Lift ‘Conscience’ Rule for Health Workers,” Bloomberg, February 27, 2009; Sarah Pulliam Baily, “Obama Admin. Changes Bush ‘Conscience’ Rule for Health Workers,” Christianity Today, February 18, 2011.

[22] Sarah Pulliam Baily, “Obama: ‘They cling to guns or religion’,” Christianity Today, April 13, 2008.

[23] Roger Severino, “President Obama Threatens to Veto Defense Bill That Protects Religious Liberty,” Charisma News,October 28, 2016.

[24] Todd Starnes, “Boykin bounced: Fort Riley cancels Delta Force hero’s prayer breakfast speech,” Fox News, June 2, 2016.

[25] Debra Heine, “USAF Vet Forcibly Removed from Flag-Folding Ceremony for Mentioning God,” PJMedia, June 20, 2016.

[26] Todd Starnes, “Bible removed from POW/MIA display inside VA clinic,” Fox News, February 29, 2016.

[27]Todd Starnes, “Navy bans chaplain from ministering to family of dead soldier,” Fox News, March 24, 2015.

[28]Todd Starnes, “Former SEALs chaplain could be kicked out of Navy for Christian beliefs,” Fox News, March 9, 2015.

[29] Hendrick Simoes, “US personnel in Bahrain prepare for Ramadan,” Stars and Stripes, June 26, 2014.

[30] Todd Starnes, “Bible controversy hits Air Force base,” Fox News, March 15, 2014.

[31] “Nativity scenes removed from Guantanamo dining halls after complaints,” Fox News, December 19, 2013.

[32] Todd Starnes, “Air Force removes Nativity scene,” Fox News, December 9, 2013.

[33] Steven Ertelt, “Army Briefing Tells Soldiers Christians and Pro-Lifers are a “Radical” Threat,” LifeNews, October 23, 2013.

[34] Todd Starnes, “Catholic priests in military face arrest for celebrating Mass,” Fox News, October 5, 2013; The Brody File, “Priest: Obama Admin. Denied Mass to Catholics,” CBN News, October 8, 2013.

[35] Stephen Losey, “Academy makes ‘God’ optional in cadets’ oath,” Air Force Times, October 25, 2013.

[36] Adan Salazar, “DoD Training Manual: ‘Extremist’ Founding Fathers ‘Would Not Be Welcome In Today’s Military’,” infowars.com, August 24, 2013.

[37] Chad Groening, “‘I cannot answer your question:’ Air Force Sgt. says lesbian commander booted him,” One News Now, August 20, 2013.

[38] “Military gives bonuses only to same-sex couples,” WND, August 20, 2013.

[39] Melanie Korb, “Air Force Invites Drag Queens to Perform on ‘Diversity Day’,” Charisma News, August 19, 2013.

[40] Chad Groening, “Attorney demands answers for Air National Guard sergeant punished for beliefs,” OneNewsNow, July 15, 2013.

[41] Todd Starnes, “Chaplain Ordered to Remove Religious Essay From Military Website,” FoxNews Radio, July 24, 2013.

[42] Hellen Cook, “Pentagon Censors Christian Art,” Christian News Wire, January 21, 2010.

[43] Todd Starnes, “Obama ‘Strongly Objects’ to Religious Liberty Amendment,” Townhall, June 12, 2013.

[44] Todd Starnes, “Air Force Removes Video that Mentions God,” Fox News Radio. June 7, 2013.

[45] Todd Starnes, “Army Punishes Soldier who Served Chick-fil-A,” Fox News Radio, June 5, 2013.

[46] “Liberty Institute Calls On U.S. Department Of Defense To Abandon Shift In Military’s Proselytizing Policy,” PR Newswire, May 7, 2013; Todd Starnes, “Air Force Officer Told to Remove Bible from Desk,” Townhall.com, May 3, 2013.

[47] “Pentagon May Court Martial Soldiers Who Share Christian Faith,” Breitbart, May 1, 2013.

[48] Todd Starnes, “Air Force Officer Told to Remove Bible from Desk,” Townhall.com, May 3, 2013.

[49] Jack Minor, “Military Warned ‘evangelicals’ No. 1 Threat,” WND, April 5, 2013.

[50] Todd Starnes, “Army Removes Bible Reference from Scopes,” Fox News Radio, April 22, 2013.

[51] “Chaplain endorsers ask Air Force for equal time,” Alliance Defending Freedom, April 30, 2013.

[52] Todd Starnes, “Pentagon: Religious Proselytizing is Not Permitted,” Fox News Radio, April 30, 2013.

[53] Billy Hallowell, “Obama Opposes NDAA’s ‘Rights of Conscience’ for Military Chaplains & Members, Vows to Protects Rights of Gays,” The Blaze, January 4, 2013; Paul Conner, “Obama calls NDAA conscience clause for military chaplains ‘unnecessary and ill-advised’,” The Daily Caller, January 3, 2013.

[54] “U.S. military insignia no longer allowed on Bibles,” CBN News, June 14, 2012.

[55] Patrick Goodenough, “White House ‘Strongly Objects’ to Legislation Protecting Military Chaplains from Doing Same-Sex Weddings or Being Forced to Act Against Conscience,” cnsnews.com, May 16, 2012.

[56] Markeshia Ricks, “Bible checklist for Air Force lodges going away,” Air Force Times, April 16, 2012.

[57] Ken Blackwell, “Gen. Boykin Blocked At West Point,” cnsnews.com, February 1, 2012.

[58] Geoff Herbert, ” Air Force unit removes ‘God’ from logo; lawmakers warn of ‘dangerous precedent’,” syracuse.com, February 9, 2012.

[59] Todd Starnes, “Army Silences Catholic Chaplains,” Fox News Radio, February 6, 2012.

[60] “Air Force Academy Backs Away from Christmas Charity,” Fox News Radio, November 4, 2011.

[61] Todd Starnes, “Obama Administration Opposes FDR Prayer at WWII Memorial,” Fox News, November 4, 2011.

[62] Jenny Dean, “Air Force Academy adapts to pagans, druids, witches and Wiccans,” Los Angeles Times, November 26, 2011.

[63] “Maintaining Government Neutrality Regarding Religion,” Department of the Air Force, September 1, 2011.

[64] “Wounded, Ill, and Injured Partners in Care Guidelines,” Department of the Navy (accessed on February 29, 2012).

[65] Jason Ukman, “Air Force suspends ethics course that used Bible passages that train missle launch officers,” Washington Post, August 2, 2011.

[66] “Houston Veterans Claim Censorship of Prayers, Including Ban of ‘God’ and ‘Jesus’,” Fox News, June 29, 2011.

[67] Todd Spangler, “U.S. firm to remove Bible references from gun sights,” USA Today, January 21, 2010.

[68] Samuel Smith, “Nun Too Crazy? Obama Trying to Hand Pick Opponent in Birth Control Battle, Little Sisters of the Poor Attorneys Say,” The Christian Post, October 14, 2015.

[69] Steven Ertelt, “President Obama’s Budget Eliminates Abstinence Education Programs,” Life News, March 5, 2014; Jennifer Liberto, “Sex abstinence program among Obama’s targeted cuts,” CNN Money, March 5, 2014.

[70] Patrick Howley, “Obamacare installs new scrutiny, fines for charitable hospitals that treat uninsured people,” The Daily Caller, August 8, 2013.

[71] “The Story of the Creation of the Nation’s First Hospital,” University of Pennsylvania Health System (accessed August 14, 2013).

[72] Wendy Wright,” USAID Rep Shuts Down Workshop on Abortion Complications,” Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute, August 9, 2013.

[73] “Obama Administration Ignores Outcries, Finalizes HHS Mandate Targeting Religious Freedom,” Liberty Counsel, July 1, 2013; Baptist Press, “Moore, others: Final mandate rules fail,” Townhall, July 1, 2013.

[74] Tony Perkins, “Obama administration begins training homosexual activists around the world,” LifeSiteNews, June 6, 2013.

[75] Ken Blackwell, “Guest Opinion: Take a Risk for Peace. Move our Embassy to Jerusalem!,” Catholic Online, June 5, 2013.

[76] “Pentagon: Service members now allowed to wear uniforms in gay pride parades,” NY Daily News, July 19, 2012.

[77] Jerry Markon, “Health, abortion issues split Obama administration and Catholic groups,” Washington Post, October 31, 2011.

[78] Luis Martinez, “Will Same Sex Marriages Pose a Dilemma for Military Chaplains?,” ABC News, October 12, 2011.

[79] Elisabeth Bumiller, “Obama Ends ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Policy,” New York Times, July 22, 2011; George Washington, The Writings of George Washington, John C. Fitzpatrick, editor (Washington: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1934), Vol. XI, pp. 83-84, from General Orders at Valley Forge on March 14, 1778.

[80] Steven Ertelt, “Obama Admin Ignores Planned Parenthood Sex Trafficking Videos,” LifeNews, March 2, 2011.

[81] Brian Montopoli, “Obama administration will no longer defend DOMA,” CBSNews, February 23, 2011.

[82] Steven Ertelt, “President Barack Obama’s Pro-Abortion Record: A Pro-Life Compilation,” LifeNews, February 11, 2012.

[83] Steven Ertelt, “Obama, Congress Cut Funding for 176 Abstinence Programs Despite New Study,” LifeNews, August 26, 2010.

[84] Tess Civantos, “White House Spent $23M of Taxpayer Money to Back Kenyan Constitution That Legalizes Abortion, GOP Reps Say,” Fox News, July 22, 2010.

[85] Matt Cover, “Obama’s EEOC Nominee: Society Should ‘Not Tolerate Private Beliefs’ That ‘Adversely Affect’ Homosexuals,” cnsnews.com, January 18, 2010.

[86] “Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies,” The White House, June 17, 2009.

[87] Steven Ertelt, “Barack Obama’s Federal Budget Eliminates Funding for Abstinence-Only Education,” LifeNews, May 8, 2009.

[88] Steven Ertelt, “Obama Budget Funds Sex Ed Over Abstinence on 16-1 Margin,” LifeNews, February 14, 2011.

[89] Steven Ertelt, “Obama Admin Terrorism Dictionary Calls Pro-Life Advocates Violent, Racist,” LifeNews, May 5, 2009.

[90] Steven Ertelt, “Pro-Life Groups Left Off Obama’s Health Care Summit List, Abortion Advocates OK,” LifeNews, March 5, 2009.

[91] “Obama Signs Order Lifting Restrictions on Stem Cell Research Funding,” Fox News, March 9, 2009.

[92] Steven Ertelt, “ Obama Administration Announces $50 Million for Pro-Forced Abortion UNFPA,” LifeNews, March 26, 2009; Steven Ertelt, “President Barack Obama’s Pro-Abortion Record: A Pro-Life Compilation,” LifeNews, February 11, 2012.

[93] Jeff Mason and Deborah Charles, “Obama lifts restrictions on abortion funding,” Reuters, January 23, 2009.

[94] “Obama pick: Taxpayers must fund abortions,” World Net Daily, January 27, 2009.

[95] “Netanyahu to Obama: Iran deal would ‘threaten the survival of Israel’,” Fox News, April 3, 2015.

[96] Masoud Popalzai and Nick Paton Walsh, “ Obama apologizes to Afghanistan for Quran burning,” CNN, February 23, 2012.

[97] “Military burns unsolicited Bibles sent to Afghanistan,” CNN, May 22, 2009.

[98] “Report: Obama’s Muslim Advisers Block Middle Eastern Christians’ Access to the White House,” Big Peace (accessed on February 29, 2012).

[99] Chuck Norris, “ President Obama: Muslim Missionary? (Part 2),” Townhall.com, August 24, 2010; Chuck Norris, “President Obama: Muslim Missionary?,” Townhall.com, August 17, 2010.

[100] Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President at Iftar Dinner,” The White House, August 13, 2010; “Obama Comes Out in Favor of Allowing Mosque Near Ground Zero,” Fox News, August 13, 2010; Pamela Geller, “Islamic Supremacism Trumps Christianity at Ground Zero,” American Thinker, July 21, 2011.

[101] “Franklin Graham Regrets Army’s Decision to Rescind Invite to Pentagon Prayer Service,” Fox News, April 22, 2010.

[102] “Obama Bans Islam, Jihad From National Security Strategy Document,” Fox News, April 7, 2010; “Counterterror Adviser Defends Jihad as ‘Legitimate Tenet of Islam’,” Fox News, May 27, 2010; “‘Islamic Radicalism’ Nixed From Obama Document,” CBSNews, April 7, 2010.

[103] Barack Obama, “ Remarks by the President at Iftar Dinner,” The White House, September 1, 2009; Kristi Keck, “ Obama tones down National Day of Prayer observance,” CNN, May 6, 2009; Dan Gilgoff, “ The White House on National Day of Prayer: A Proclamation, but No Formal Ceremony,” U.S. News, May 1, 2009.

[104] “WH Fails to Release Easter Proclamation,” Fox Nation, April 25, 2011; “President Obama ignores most holy Christian holiday; AFA calls act intentional,” American Family Association (accessed on February 29, 2012).

* This article concerns a historical issue and may not have updated information.

Political Parties and Racial Equality

No, Salon, It is Democrats, not Republicans, Who Need to
“hide” When it Comes to Promoting Racial Equality

by Dr. David Barton

Dr. Paul Escott, professor of history at Wake Forest University, wrote a book entitled Lincoln’s Dilemma: Blair, Sumner, and the Republican Struggle over Racism and Equality in the Civil War Era (2014). The website Salon published a part of this work as an essay entitled “Republicans hide behind ‘the party of Lincoln’ to deflect racism charges. The party’s history is more complicated.”¹

Much of Escott’s article accurately demonstrates that Lincoln opposed slavery and that the Republican Party was founded to combat this vile institution. But the essay’s title suggests otherwise. Whether it was professor Escott who wrote the title, or an over-eager editor at Salon, it is profoundly misleading, as are parts of the essay.

For instance, Escott asserts that Lincoln engaged in racist acts as a young politician. As evidence, he writes:

As a young politician, Lincoln engaged in the race-baiting and racist rhetoric that was common among Illinois politicians. While his party’s newspaper, the Sangamo Journal, accused a Democratic presidential nominee of “love for free negroes,” the young Lincoln charged that his “very trail might be followed by scattered bunches of Nigger wool.”²

Escott seems to believe that this 1840 quotation is a “smoking gun” that proves Lincoln to be a racist. But these were not Lincoln’s words.

The event that gave rise to this specific quote was an April 17, 1840 story in the State Register, where a pro-slavery Democrat sought to sully the reputation of the Whig Abraham Lincoln by claiming he was descended from blacks – that he was “from outward appearance originally from Liberia.”³ Since Democrats at this time generally saw blacks as subhuman,⁴ this was intended to denigrate Lincoln. But Lincoln replied ably to the attack.⁵

Three weeks later, on May 8, 1840, J. A. Chestnut wrote a response in the Sangamo Journal, defending Lincoln from the attack in the State Register.⁶ He openly ridiculed Lincoln’s attacker and, like the attacker, used insultingly racist language. In Chestnut’s opinion, Lincoln had “showed in his speech” that the head of his opponent’s party was “clothed with the sable furs of Guinea – whose breath smells rank with devotion to the cause of Africa’s sons – and whose very trail might be followed by scattered bunches of Nigger wool.”⁷ These are offensive words, but they belong to Chestnut, not Lincoln. Although he was purporting to describe a speech by Lincoln speech, even Chestnut does not pretend that Lincoln said these specific words.

Escott, in his attempt to “complicate” history, misattributes Chestnut’s words to Lincoln. At best, this is a significant error. At worst, it is dishonest revisionism.

Ironically, most of Escott’s article supports the idea that Lincoln was not a racist and that the Republican Party was founded to combat slavery and racism. This view can easily be supported with additional evidence. For example:

The national party platforms of 1856, 1860, and 1864 (the presidential elections leading up to and during Lincoln’s administration) show the Democrats as open and proud racists and Republicans as ardent civil rights proponents.⁸ In fact, the Republican platform of 1856 had only nine planks, and seven of them directly addressed achieving racial equality and civil rights.⁹
When the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery was voted on by Congress in 1865, only 19 of the 82 (that is, 23 percent of) House Democrats voted to end slavery, but all 118 of the Republicans voted to end slavery.¹⁰
A similar voting pattern is visible in the passage of the other two racial Civil Rights Amendments (the Fourteenth Amendment of 1868, and the Fifteenth Amendment of 1870)¹¹ as well as the first two dozen civil rights laws passed in Congress.¹² In fact, in the 1875 anti-Klan bill, not a single Democrat in Congress voted either to outlaw or punish the Ku Klux Klan.¹³
All of the notorious Jim Crow laws and onerous Black Codes were enacted by Democrat legislatures and signed into law by Democrat governors.¹⁴
It was not until 1944 that the U. S. Supreme Court struck down the Democrat Party’s long-standing official policy of white-only primaries.¹⁵
Blacks from the south were not elected to Congress as Democrats until 1974, and then only after the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that the Democrat Party must stop drawing election lines to prevent blacks from being elected.¹⁶

Without a doubt some early Republicans were racists, and it would be shocking indeed if Lincoln never made a racist comment. But that is no excuse to misattribute Chestnut’s words to him and by any measure, the Democratic Party has been far more racist than has the Republican Party. So there is no need for contemporary Republicans to “hide” behind the Party of Lincoln. Instead, they should – and do – proudly embrace the Party’s long history of fighting for racial equality,¹⁷ despite what Salon wrongly claims.

Endnotes

¹ “Racism the founding of the GOP: Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War and the real history of the Republican Party,” Salon, September 13, 2014.

² “Racism the founding of the GOP: Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War and the real history of the Republican Party,” Salon, September 13, 2014.

³ Herbert Mitang, Abraham Lincoln: A Press Portrait (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1971), 18-20, quoting from J. A. Chestnut as published in the Sangamo Journal of May 8, 1840.

⁴ Indications of this belief by Democrats were expressed in many ways over the two decades preceding this incident. For example, in 1820 the Democrat-controlled Congress passed the Missouri Compromise (Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States, 2555-2559, 16th Congress, 1st Session, “An act to authorize the people of Missouri Territory to form a constitution and state government,” approved March 6, 1820). It was the first federal act that expanded rather than reduced slavery in America. It repealed the 1789 law signed by President George Washington that forbid slavery in any federal territory (Acts Passed at a Congress of the United States of America Begun and Held at the City of New-York, on Wednesday the Fourth of March, in the Year 1789 (Hartford: Hudson & Goodwin, 1791), 104, August 7, 1789), which at that time included what became Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. But as a result of the law passed by Democrats, slavery would no longer by banned in all federal territories but would now be permitted in certain ones. Consequently states began to enter the Union in pairs – one slave state and one free state together (“Missouri Compromise,” Library of Congress (accessed on September 7, 2016)) and slavery began to expand nationally with direct Democrat assistance. Later, the Democrat Platform of 1840 offered a strong defense of slavery, stating that “that all efforts by Abolitionists or others made to induce Congress to interfere with questions of slavery, or to take incipient steps in relation thereto, are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences, and that all such efforts have an inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people and endanger the stability and permanence of the Union,” thus expressing the amazing Democrat belief that efforts to end slavery in America reduced the happiness of the people. Subsequent Democrat platforms took even stronger positions for slavery and against blacks. (See, for example, Thomas Hudson McKee, The National Conventions and Platforms of All Political Parties, 1789-1905 (reprinted New York: Burt Franklin, 1971), 41-42, 48, 60, and passim.)

⁵ Herbert Mitang, Abraham Lincoln: A Press Portrait (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1971), 18-20, quoting from J. A. Chestnut as published in the Sangamo Journal of May 8, 1840.

⁶ Herbert Mitang, Abraham Lincoln: A Press Portrait (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1971), 18, quoting from J. A. Chestnut as published in the Sangamo Journal of May 8, 1840; Richard Lawrence Miller, Lincoln and His World: Prairie Politician, 1834-1842 (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2008), 382.

⁷ Herbert Mitang, Abraham Lincoln: A Press Portrait (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1971), 18-20, quoting from J. A. Chestnut as published in the Sangamo Journal of May 8, 1840.

⁸ See, for example, Republican Campaign Edition for the Million (Boston: John Jewett & Co., 1856), 3-8; Thomas Hudson McKee, The National Conventions and Platforms of All Political Parties, 1789-1905 (New York: Burt Franklin, 1971), 91, 97-99, 108-109, 113-116, 125; an original 1864 broadside of the Republican Party Platform in our possession.

⁹ Republican Campaign Edition for the Million (Boston: John Jewett & Co., 1856), 3-8; Thomas Hudson McKee, The National Conventions and Platforms of All Political Parties, 1789-1905 (New York: Burt Franklin, 1971), 97-99.

¹⁰ Journal of the House of Representatives, 38th Congress, 2nd Session (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1865), pp. 168-171, January 31, 1865; Journal of the Senate, 38th Congress, 1st Session (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1863), 313, April 11, 1864.

¹¹ Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States of America (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1866), Vol. 63, pp. 833-834, “June 13, 1866”; Journal of the Senate of the United States of America (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1865), 58:505, “June 8, 1866”; Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1869), 449-450, 40th Congress, 3rd Session, February 25, 1869; Journal of the Senate of the United States (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1869), 361, 40th Congress, 3rd Session, February 25, 1869.

¹² Statutes . . . from December, 1865, to March, 1867, 14:27-30, 39th Congress, 1st Session, Chapter 31, April 9, 1866, “An Act to protect all Persons in the United States in their Civil Rights”; Statutes . . . from December, 1865, to March, 1867, 14,:50, 39th Congress, 1st Session, Chapter 86, May 21, 1866, “An Act to prevent and punish Kidnapping”; p. 236, Chapter 240, July 25, 1866, “An Act legalizing Marriages and for other Purposes in the District of Columbia”; Statutes . . . from December, 1865, to March, 1867, 14:375-376, 39th Congress, 2nd Session, Chapter 6, January 8, 1867, “An Act to regulate the elective Franchise in the District of Columbia”; 379-380, Chapter 15, January 25, 1867, An Act to regulate the elective Franchise in the Territories of the United States”; 391-392, Chapter 36, February 9, 1867, “An Act for the Admission of the State of Nebraska Into the Union”; 428-430, Chapter 153, March 2, 1867, “An Act to provide for the more efficient Government of the Rebel States”; 546, Chapter 187, March 2, 1867, “An Act to abolish and forever prohibit the System of Peonage”; Statutes . . . from December, 1867, to March, 1869, 15:72-73, 40th Congress, 2nd Session, Chapter 69, June 22, 1868, “An Act to admit the State of Arkansas to Representation in Congress”; 73-74, Chapter 70, June 25, 1868, “An Act to admit the States of North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida to Representation in Congress.” Statutes . . . from December 1869 to March 1871, 16:3, 41st Congress, 1st Session, Chapter 3, March 18, 1869, “An Act for further Security of equal Rights in the District of Columbia.” Statutes . . . from December 1869 to March 1871, 16:62-63, 41st Congress, 2nd Session, Chapter 10, January 26, 1870, “An Act to admit the State of Virginia to Representation”; 67-68, Chapter 19, February 28, 1870, “An Act to admit the State of Mississippi to Representation”; 80-81, Chapter 39, March 30, 1870, “An Act to admit the State of Texas to Representation”; 140-146, Chapter 114, May 31, 1870, “An Act to enforce the Right of Citizens of the United States to vote.” Statutes . . . from December 1869 to March 1871, 16:433-440, 41st Congress, 3rd Session, Chapter 99, February 28, 1871, “An Act to amend ‘An Act to enforce the Right of Citizens of the United States to vote’”; 17:13-15, 42nd Congress, 1st Session, Chapter 22, April 20, 1871, “An Act to enforce the Provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.” Statutes at Large and Proclamations of the United States of America, from March 1871 to March 1873, George P. Sanger, editor (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1873), 17:601, 42nd Congress, 3rd Session, Chapter 262, March 3, 1873, “An Act to place colored Persons who enlisted in the Army on the same Footing as other Soldiers.” Statutes at Large, from December, 1873, to March, 1875 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1875), 18:335-337, 43rd Congress, 2nd Session, Chapter 114, March 1, 1875, “An act to protect all citizens in their civil and legal rights.”

¹³ Congressional Globe (Appendix), 808, April 19, 1871; 831, April 20, 1871.

¹⁴ W. E. B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction In America (New York: The Free Press, 1962), 173, 177; Dictionary Of American History, s. v. “Black Codes”; African-American History online, “The Black Codes of 1865”; The Handbook of Texas Online, “Black Codes”; Brayton, Election Law of South Carolina, 16.

¹⁵ Smith v. Allwright, 321 U. S. 649, 658 (1944).

¹⁶ The Handbook of Texas Online, “African Americans and Politics”; South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301, 311 (1966); Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U. S. 339, 346-348 (1960).

¹⁷ See, for example, David Barton, Setting the Record Straight: American History in Black & White (Aledo, TX: WallBuilder Press, 2013).

Election Resources and Information

Christians and Voting

Should Christians vote? What should they consider when voting? Find out in these videos!

Why Your Vote Matters

Five things to remember

Elections with David & Tim Barton (USB Thumb Drive)

Register to Vote

Are you registered to vote? If you’re not, click here and click on your state to register and make your voice heard this year.

Know the Candidates and Issues

So, how do we elect righteous leaders?

Obtain a sample ballot from your county. Many times they are available on the county’s election website.

Pray and ask God to give you wisdom. Recognize that there are no perfect humans, therefore no perfect candidate, but God can use even imperfect people to perform His will.

Examine the candidates to see where they stand on the issues compared to what the Bible says about those same issues. (Valuing what God values even in voting reveals priorities. God created 613 laws in the Old Testament, but specifically gave Moses His “Top Ten” list in Exodus 20. Issues surrounding life, marriage, and property are found in God’s “Top Ten” list. You can also find political/governmental matters regarding religious freedom, self-defense, taxes, etc. throughout the Old and New Testaments.)

Prioritize God’s values when voting. Consider the candidates’ positions compared to God’s “Top Ten” list. Thus, protecting unborn life and preserving Biblical gender standards are more important than problems like taxes or highway construction. Whether a candidate is running for school board or President of the United States, look for his or her record on Biblical morality and religious liberty issues as the best indicator of how each will act on every other issue.

Research candidates to know what they believe. You can learn about what candidates believe in many ways: check their websites about key issues or simply call their campaigns and ask and check with your politically-active Christian neighbors or friends about certain candidates and their beliefs. A candidate’s endorsements may also tell you a lot. For example, are they being endorsed by National Right to Life or Reproductive Freedom for All? Additionally, you can check out ChristianVoterGuide.com to find voter guides on many candidates and issues.

Vote Biblical values, not personal preference!

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How Does Jeremiah 17:9 Relate to the Constitutional Separation of Powers?

In their public presentations, our WallBuilders speakers frequently provide historical examples of how specific Bible verses impacted particular aspects of American culture. For example, the story of Matthew Maury and his geographical discoveries involves Psalm 8 and Ecclesiastes 1:6; James Kent (“A Father of American Jurisprudence”) cites 1 Samuel 7:15-16 with the formation of circuit courts; Isaiah 33:22 is associated with the three branches of government; and other such examples. ¹

Many audience members, intrigued by how specific Bible verses directly shaped American practices, look up the Bible references that we routinely mention and are immediately impressed with their specificity and obvious applicability. But almost universally when they check John Adams’ mention of Jeremiah 17:9² as the basis of the constitutional separation of powers, they are perplexed and often conclude that our speaker must have used the wrong reference. It doesn’t seem that Jeremiah 17:9 relates to constitutional separation of powers, but it actually does. Allow us to explain, but first let’s lay some groundwork.

When Progressives grasped the reins of common education in the early 1900s, they introduced profound systemic changes, including age-graded education (previously, students were grouped according to knowledge level rather than age level), compulsory education (school attendance had been generally voluntary), extended school years (school was often three months a year, but Progressives made it most of the year), and twelve years of government education (prior to the Progressives, virtually no one went past eight-grade learning levels, after which they would enter college or some trade or profession). ³

These changes were not because previous educational practices had been unsuccessful, for it had been just the opposite. In fact, few college graduates today can master the eighth-grade exit exam given in the early 1900s by most states, ⁴ when school only lasted for a few months a year and for only eight years.

Perhaps the most significant transformation imposed by Progressives was that students were no longer taught how to think, but rather how to learn. Instead of being trained to reason sequentially and study and confirm independent sources, students were now required to listen to what the teacher said and then repeat it back. Thus, true/false, multiple choice, and fill-in-the-blank tests were introduced, ⁵ for they did not require a mastery of subject-matter knowledge but rather only a mastery of whatever the teacher had said.

By this change, the teacher became the small end of the funnel of knowledge – everything flowed through the teacher to the student. To invoke an old proverb, no longer did the student learn how to fish, but rather the teacher now gave them the fish. Because students were no longer trained in critical thinking, widespread indoctrination became the result – whatever the teacher believed was what was communicated to students, which they also came to believe. The warning by Jesus in Luke 6:40 had become reality: “Every student, when he is fully trained, will be like his teacher.”

Progressivism, liberalism, secularism, relativism, socialism, and other isms were now freely communicated to students by academia, and these beliefs have now thoroughly permeated the culture as those students become adults and filled various professions.

One teaching common among Progressives (and now widely believed even by many Christians) is that man is innately good but sometimes does bad things.⁶ But the Bible teaches just the opposite – that man is innately bad but sometimes does good things; and that is only when man’s wicked heart is remade by God.

Under the Progressive belief, if man shoots someone, the problem is with the gun; since man is instinctively good, it can’t be his fault that something bad happened, so we need to regulate the gun, not the man. Or if someone gets drunk and abuses his spouse, it is because man has a medical disease beyond his control – it’s not his fault, for he is inherently good. Or if someone fathers a dozen children out of wedlock, it is because he was not given enough condoms in school. In short, under Progressivism, if man does something bad, there was some outside cause for it, for man is inherently good.

But the Bible says just the opposite. Notice a few verses on this:

Mark 7:21-23 – For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within. (Matthew 5:19)
Genesis 6:5 & 8:21 – The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
Romans 3:9 – It is written: “None is righteous, no, not one.” (c.f. Psalm 14:1-3, 53:1-3)
Ecclesiastes 9:3 – The hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts.
Galatians 5:19-21 – Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like.
Psalm 5:9 – For there is no truth in their mouth; their inmost self is destruction; their throat is an open grave; they flatter with their tongue.

According to the Bible, man will only begin to do what is good when God changes his heart (see, for example Romans 6:6,16-17,19-20, 2 Corinthians 5:17, etc.). Without a life changed by God, mankind is naturally inclined to do what is wrong.

The Founders firmly held this Biblical view. They therefore constructed government fully expecting the worst – expecting that the people leading all three branches would become corrupt. Fifty-five hundred years of recorded history prior to the Founding Fathers had demonstrated that as the pattern of every human government that had ever existed. Understanding this, the Founders made specific plans to help limit the inherent corruption of man and they sought ways to prevent all three branches from becoming wicked at the same time. They wanted a fail-safe so that if one did, then perhaps the other branches could restrain it or drag it back to its limited function. The result was the various clauses providing and enforcing Separation of Powers.

The following excerpt is from the Founders’ Bible and it explains how the truth inherent in Jeremiah 17:9 helped produce the constitutional separation of powers.

Jeremiah 17:9 – The Constitutional Separation of Powers

“The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it?”

The separation of powers and reciprocal checks and balances incorporated throughout the Constitution has been heralded as one of the most important features of American government, enabling it not only to survive but to thrive for over two centuries. History was filled with examples showing that when government power was centralized in one body or leader, that government always became a danger to the rights of individuals and brought that nation to ruin. But the Founding Fathers had not only the examples of history to guide them but especially the teachings of the Bible.

A well-known verse addressing this subject was Jeremiah 17:9: “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it?” This verse encapsulated what Calvinistic ministers and theologians termed the “depravity of man” or “total depravity” ⁷ (that the natural heart of man easily embraced moral and civil degradation), and it was a frequent topic for sermons in the Founding Era. The Founding Fathers understood the import of this verse and openly cited it – as when John Adams reminded Americans:

Let me conclude by advising all men to look into their own hearts, which they will find to be ‘deceitful above all things and desperately wicked’ [Jeremiah 17:9].⁸

The Biblically illiterate believe in the innate goodness of man – that man will naturally do what is right, but experience regularly affirms the opposite: without a heart regenerated by the power of God, man will routinely do what is wrong. Adams specifically rejected any notion of the innate goodness of man, especially when it came to government:

To expect self-denial from men when they have a majority in their favor, and consequently power to gratify themselves, is to disbelieve all history and universal experience – it is to disbelieve revelation and the Word of God, which informs us ‘the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked’ [Jeremiah 17:9]. . . . There is no man so blind as not to see that to talk of founding a government upon a supposition that nations and great bodies of men left to themselves will practice a course of self-denial is either to babble like a newborn infant or to deceive like an unprincipled impostor.⁹

And even those who had experienced a regenerated heart through the power of God in Christ and who did not embrace Calvinism nevertheless knew enough about the truth of this verse and the tendencies of the heart to not even fully trust themselves to be above its corrupting influence. As John Quincy Adams explained:

I believe myself sincere; but the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked [Jeremiah 17:9]. I do not believe the total depravity of man, but I am deeply conscious of the frailty of my own nature.¹⁰

Understanding this principle from Jeremiah 17 – a principle that was accepted by all sides of the theological spectrum – the Founders knew that government would be much safer if all power did not repose in the same authority. Making practical application of this Biblical truth, they therefore divided and checked power between branches so that if one leader or branch went wicked, the other two might still check and stop it. As George Washington explained:

A just estimate of that love of power and proneness to abuse it which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power by dividing and distributing it into different depositories . . . has been evinced [demonstrated] by experiments ancient and modern, some of them in our country and under our own eyes.¹¹

This remarkable feature of American government – the separation of powers and reciprocal checks and balances – can be attributed to the Founders’ understanding of Jeremiah 17:9.

Endnotes

¹ For more information, see The Founders’ Bible (Shiloh Road Publishers, 2012).

² John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Charles Francis Adams, editor (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1851), Vol. III, p. 443, “On Private Revenge III,” published in the Boston Gazette, September 5, 1763; John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America (London: John Stockdale, 1794), Vol. III, p. 289, “Letter VI. The Right Constitution of a Commonwealth, examined.”

³ For more information, see “A Short History of United States’ Education 1900 to 2006,” historyliteracy.org (accessed on September 7, 2016); “10 Things You Should Know About the American Founding,” The Catholic World Report, July 3, 2012; “A campus shared by the College, the Academy and the Charity School,” Penn University Archives & Records Center (accessed on September 7, 2016); “John Dewey,” Biography (accessed on September 7, 2016).

⁴ See some examples of 8th grade exit exams in: B. A. Hathaway, 1001 Test Examples in Arithmetic with Answers (Cleveland, OH: Burrows Brothers Company, 1890); Warp’s Review Books (Minden, NE: Warp Publishing Company, 1928), on various subjects; Colorado State Eighth Grade Examination Question Book (Lincoln, NE: Lincoln Supply Co., 1927).

⁵ See, for example, Colorado State Eighth Grade Examination Question Book (Nebraska: 1927), pp. 4, 10, 12, questions from a 1927 Agriculture, Arithmetic, and Civics test; “true-false test,” Merriam-Webster (accessed on September 7, 2016); “multiple-choice,” Merriam-Webster (accessed on September 7, 2016).

⁶ See an example of this philosophy in Theodore Roosevelt, “Who is a Progressive?” Teaching American History, April 1912.

⁷ See, for example, “total depravity,” Merriam-Webster (accessed on September 6, 2016); Herman Hanko, The Five Points of Calvinism (1976), “Chapter 1: Total Depravity.”

⁸ John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Charles Francis Adams, editor (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1851), Vol. III, p. 443, “On Private Revenge III,” published in the Boston Gazette, September 5, 1763.

⁹ John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America (London: John Stockdale, 1794), Vol. III, p. 289, “Letter VI. The Right Constitution of a Commonwealth, examined.”

¹⁰ John Quincy Adams, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Charles Francis Adams, editor (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co, 1876), Vol. XI, p. 270, November 16, 1842.

¹¹ George Washington, Address of George Washington, President of the United States, and Late Commander in Chief of the American Army, to the People of the United States, Preparatory to His Declination (Baltimore: Christopher Jackson, 1796), p. 22.

No Professor Fea, The Founders Did Not Want Ministers to Stay out of Politics

by Dr. David Barton

Dr. John Fea is a professor of history at Messiah College in Pennsylvania. He has been an outspoken critic of those who believe that America had a Christian founding or think ministers should be active in politics.¹ In addition to being an historian, he writes political columns praising those on the political left. For example, he called President Barack Obama “the most explicitly Christian president in American history,” and asserted that his “piety, use of the Bible, and references to Christian faith and theology put most other American presidents to shame.”² Given Professor Fea’s political disposition, it is perhaps not surprising that his blog posts and opinion pieces on political issues are regularly critical of religious conservatives.

For instance, Dr. Fea strongly objected when 700 pastors gathered to hear from Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. The candidate addressed issues of immediate concern to some pastors, notably the Johnson Amendment – a 1954 law that many believe unconstitutionally prohibits churches from addressing or speaking about political issues or candidates. (In my view, whether or not churches should address issues of public policy or endorse candidates is a question that should be decided solely by individual churches, not the federal government.)

Fea seems particularly upset by the idea that these 700 ministers might exercise their rights as American citizens to be involved in politics. Misusing historical arguments to bolster his own personal views, he writes:

The founders who crafted the original state governments – those governments celebrated by today’s conservative politicians as the most important source of democratic life – thought it was a good idea for ministers to stay out of politics [emphasis added]. The state constitutions of North Carolina (1776), New York (1777), Georgia (1777), South Carolina (1778), Delaware (1792), Tennessee (1796), Maryland (1799), and Kentucky (1799) all banned clergymen from running for office. The 1776 North Carolina Constitution states “that no clergyman, or preacher of the gospel of any denomination, shall be capable of being a member of either the Senate, House of Commons, or Council of State, while he continues in the exercise of the pastoral function.” The 1777 New York Constitution uses similar language: “And whereas the ministers of the gospels are, by their profession, dedicated to the service of God and the care of souls, and ought not to be diverted from the great duties of their function; therefore, no minister of the gospel, or priest of any denomination whatsoever, shall, at any time hereafter, under any pretense of description whatever, be eligible to, or capable of holding, any civil or military office or place within this State.”³

It is true that some state constitutions prohibited clergy from holding office. It is important to note that one reason they did so was because their framers had such a high view of the ministry that they did not want clergy to be distracted by “worldly” concerns. Yet only a small minority of states⁴ ever attempted to exclude ministers from public office, and most states that did eventually decided these restrictions were inappropriate and voluntarily removed them. In 1978, the United States Supreme Court declared the few remaining disqualifications to be unconstitutional.⁵

But it is not just states that changed their minds. Consider the views of Thomas Jefferson, often presented as one of the least religious of the Founding Fathers. The 1776 Virginia constitution contained a clergy-exclusion clause⁶ that Jefferson originally supported, explaining:

The clergy are excluded because if admitted into the legislature at all, the probability is that they would form its majority, for they are dispersed through every county in the state; they have influence with the people and great opportunities of persuading them to elect them into the legislature. This body, though shattered, is still formidable, still forms a corps, and is still actuated by the esprit de corps. The nature of that spirit has been severely felt by mankind, and has filled the history of ten or twelve centuries with too many atrocities not to merit a proscription from meddling with government.⁷

This was the early constitution of a state that, like many of the other states that excluded clergy from holding public office, had formally established the Church of England (that is, Anglicanism) as the colony’s official religion. Under these establishments the free exercise of religion was severely restricted for Quakers, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, and other non-Anglicans, who were sometimes beaten, imprisoned, or fined by civic authorities joined to the state-established church.⁸ Moreover, clergy from these established churches were far more likely to be Loyalists (that is supportive of Great Britain and opposed to American independence) than clergy from other denominations. Clergy-exclusion clauses generally were not enacted in states with a history of republican or patriotic ministers, such as Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

Jefferson, being from Anglican Virginia, feared that the religious persecution that had occurred earlier in his state might return in the newly independent Virginia. He wanted that possibility precluded and thus supported the constitutional provision. He may have also been concerned about the loyalty of these Anglican clergy. But later, when the power of the state-established church in Virginia had been fully broken and a proven record of all Christian denominations being treated equally under the law had been thoroughly demonstrated, Jefferson no longer supported that clause, explaining in 1800 to the Rev. Jeremiah Moore:

I observe . . . an abridgment of the right of being elected, which after 17 years more of experience and reflection, I do not approve: it is the incapacitation of a clergyman from being elected. . . . Even in 1783, we doubted the stability of our recent measures for reducing them [the clergy] to the footing of other useful callings [but i]t now appears that our means were effectual. The clergy here seem to have relinquished all pretension to privilege and to stand on a footing with lawyers, physicians &c. They ought therefore to possess the same rights.⁹

Not only did Jefferson think clergy should be able to run for office, there are even times when he encouraged them to do so. For instance, when he learned that his friend the Rev. Charles Clay was a candidate for Congress, he wrote him a letter wherein he wished him “every prosperity in this and in all your other undertakings.”¹⁰ And he personally recruited the Rev. William Woods, a local Baptist pastor, to run for a seat in the state legislature.¹¹

As in Virginia, Georgia’s first state constitution contained a clause declaring: “No clergyman of any denomination shall be allowed a seat in the legislature.”¹² When Presbyterian minister and signer of the Declaration John Witherspoon learned of this provision, he was livid. He had invested much of his adult life in securing not only civil but also religious liberties for every individual, including ministers, and he was not about to see a reduction of those liberties. He therefore sent off a fiery public letter, pointedly asking Georgia’s lawmakers:

Now suffer me to ask this question: Before any man among us was ordained a minister, was he not a citizen of the United States, and if being in Georgia, a citizen of the state of Georgia? Had he not then a right to be elected a member of the assembly, if qualified in point of property? How then has he lost, or why is he deprived of this right? Is it by offence or disqualification? Is it a sin against the public to become a minister? Does it merit that the person who is guilty of it should be immediately deprived of one of his most important rights as a citizen? Is not this inflicting a penalty, which always supposes an offence? Is a minister then disqualified for the office of a senator or representative? Does this calling and profession render him stupid or ignorant?¹³

Witherspoon then raised additional questions Georgia legislators apparently had not considered when drafting this clause. For example, what is it that makes a man a minister? Does he have to be ordained by the Pope? Or is it because his denomination or even local church considers him a minister? Or what if he simply declares himself a minister, with no confirmation by anyone else? Furthermore, how long is a person a minister? If he is retired, is he still disqualified from running? And what if he is bi-vocational – what if he also runs a business, or also teaches science and math? Is he a mathematician or a minister? Ironically, there was no disqualification against a corrupt individual running for office, or a known criminal, but there was a disqualification against a preacher? Having pointed out absurdities in their policy, Witherspoon sarcastically concluded:

I cannot help thinking that these difficulties are very considerable, and may occasion much litigation if the article of the constitution stands in the loose, ambiguous form in which it now appears; and therefore I would recommend the following alterations, which I think will make everything definite and unexceptionable:
“No clergyman of any denomination shall be capable of being elected a member of the Senate or House of Representatives because {here insert the grounds of offensive disqualification, which I have not been able to discover}. Provided always – and it is the true intent and meaning of this part of the constitution – that if at any time he shall be completely deprived of the clerical character by those by whom he was invested with it [that is, he is defrocked], as by deposition for cursing and swearing, drunkenness or uncleanness, he shall then be fully restored to all the privileges of a free citizen; his offence [of being a minister] shall no more be remembered against him; but he may be chosen either to the Senate or House of Representatives, and shall be treated with all the respect due to his brethren, the other members of Assembly.”¹⁴

Witherspoon’s critique must have struck a chord. When Georgia re-wrote its constitution in 1798, the clause prohibiting ministers from state office was deleted and a strong declaration of the rights of religious persons was inserted¹⁵ – a vast reversal from its first constitution.

It is not clear if Fea, in opposition to Jefferson, Witherspoon, and the United States Supreme Court, thinks it is appropriate to exclude clergy from holding public office. But he indisputably states that America’s Founders “thought it was a good idea for ministers to stay out of politics,”¹⁶ a position he endorses. He couldn’t be more mistaken.

Throughout American history clergy have played a key role in American politics, some while holding office and others without doing so. Consider, for instance, those brave ministers who led the fight against slavery, opposed Indian removal, and advocated for civil rights. One strongly suspects that Fea would support the political activities of these ministers.

Fea, like many on the political left, is guilty of embracing a double standard. If a member of the clergy supports a policy he favors, that is a good thing. But if a minister takes a political stand of which he does not approve, that cannot be tolerated. In this case, it is noteworthy that he is opposing clergy listening to a speech by Donald Trump, a candidate whom Fea has publicly criticized.¹⁷

This sort of hypocrisy is nothing new. John Adams observed this same behavior toward the patriotic preachers of his day, noting that:

It is curious to observe the conduct of the Tories [those who opposed the patriots] towards this sacred body. If a clergyman preaches against the principles of the Revolution and tells the people that upon pain of damnation they must submit to an established government of whatever character, the Tories cry him up as an excellent man and a wonderful preacher, invite him to their tables, procure him missions from the society and chaplainships to the navy, and flatter him with the hopes of lawn sleeves [i.e., a special church appointment]. But if a clergyman preaches Christianity, and tells the magistrates that they were not distinguished from their brethren for their private emolument [personal economic benefit] but for the good of the people – that the people are bound in conscience to obey a good government but are not bound to submit to one that aims at destroying all the ends of government – Oh, sedition! Treason!¹⁸

Significantly, Adams goes on to specifically reject Fea’s position, declaring:

It is the duty of the clergy to accommodate their discourses to the times – to preach against such sins as are most prevalent and recommend such virtues as are most wanted [lacking]. For example, if exorbitant ambition and venality [public corruption and bribery] are predominant, ought they not to warn their hearers against these vices? If public spirit is much wanted [lacking], should they not inculcate this great virtue? If the rights and duties of Christian magistrates [public officials] and subjects are disputed, should they not explain them, show their nature, ends, limitations, and restrictions, how much soever it may move the gall [anger the critics] . . .¹⁹

Adams rejoiced that concerning civil issues, “the pulpits have thundered”;²⁰ but today Fea would apparently have the pulpits (or at least those pulpits promoting views to which he is opposed) be silent.

As Fea must know, there are a host of books by historians that attest to the important role both office-holding and non-office holding clergy played in the War for Independence and the creation of the new national government.²¹ Consider a few additional historical facts that Fea ignores:

Numerous individuals who served in formal ministry at some point in their lives also served in the Continental and Confederation Congresses, including John Witherspoon, Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg, Benjamin Contee, Abiel Foster, James Manning, Joseph Montgomery, Jesse Root, Hugh Williamson, Robert Treat Paine, Lyman Hall, Paine Wingate, and John Zubly.²²
The Rev. Jacob Green of New Jersey was chairman of the committee that drafted the state’s original constitution in 1776;²³ the Rev. Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg helped draft Pennsylvania’s 1776 constitution;⁴² the Revs. Samuel Stillman, Robert Treat Paine, and Gad Hitchcock helped write Massachusetts’ 1780 constitution;²⁵ the Revs. John Bailey, David Rice, George Stovall Smith, Benedict Swope, Caleb Wallace, and James Crawford helped draft Kentucky’s original constitution of 1792;²⁶ the Rev. John Smith helped frame Ohio’s original constitution of 1802;²⁷ and the Rev. Amasa Learned helped write Connecticut’s first constitution following the Revolution.²⁸
Christian ministers were also at the forefront of the movement for a federal constitution. The Revs. Jeremy Belknap and Samuel Stanhope Smith became leaders in pointing out the defects of the Articles of Confederation,²⁹ joining their voices with those of the Rev. Dr. Witherspoon and the Rev. James Manning, both of whom had personally experienced its shortcomings while operating under it as members of Congress.³⁰
Several delegates at the Constitutional Convention were trained in ministry or theology, including Abraham Baldwin, James Wilson, Hugh Williamson, and Oliver Ellsworth.³¹
When the federal Constitution was submitted to the states for ratification, nearly four dozen clergymen were elected as ratifying delegates,³² and many of them played key roles in securing its adoption. For example, in Massachusetts, it appeared that the Constitution would be rejected until the efforts of the Rev. Samuel West³³ and the Rev. Samuel Stillman helped carry the day in support of the Constitution.³⁴ Benjamin Lincoln (one of George Washington’s most trusted generals during the final campaigns of the War for Independence) reported to his former Commander-in-Chief: “It is very fortunate for us that the clergy are pretty generally with us . . .”³⁵
In addition to ministers holding office, active Christian leaders and laymen also played a key role. According to the historian Stephen Marini, “Literally hundreds of [delegates to the U. S. Constitution ratification conventions] were Anglican vestrymen, Congregational deacons, and Presbyterian ruling elders. These were the highest offices available to laymen, empowering them to maintain the financial health of the parish, to enforce the moral norms of the church, and often to choose the minister of the congregation. Many hundreds more of the delegates were loyal parishioners who held lesser church offices: trustees, wardens, tithingmen, assessors, teachers, moderators, commissioners, and committeemen.”³⁶

So ministers were not only vital in helping secure America’s independence and its form of government but they were also at the forefront of celebrating the new federal Constitution. During the ratification parade in Philadelphia, signer of the Declaration Benjamin Rush happily reported:

The clergy formed a very agreeable part of the procession. They manifested by their attendance their sense of the connection between religion and good government. They amounted to seventeen in number. Four and five of them marched arm in arm with each other to exemplify the Union. Pains were taken to connect ministers of the most dissimilar religious principles together, thereby to show the influence of a free government in promoting Christian charity. The rabbi of the Jews locked in the arms of two ministers of the Gospel was a most delightful sight. There could not have been a more happy emblem.³⁷

When the first federal Congress convened, its members numbered several ministers, both active and inactive, including the Revs. Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg, John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg, Abiel Foster, Benjamin Contee, Abraham Baldwin, Hugh Williamson, and Paine Wingate. In fact, the first Speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives was the Rev. Frederick Muhlenberg; and his is one of only two signatures appearing at the bottom of the Bill of Rights – which was intended to secure the right of every citizen – including ministers – to participate in the political process. This includes the First Amendment rights that protect the ability of ministers to publicly criticize the government, to speak freely about what is occurring in the civil arena, to join with other ministers and Christians to do the same, to express their personal religious convictions about any public policy issue, and to serve in public office!

And just as history does not demand the exclusion of ministers, neither does the Bible. Consider how often God sent His ministers to publicly confront civil leaders or expose their wicked policies:

Elijah confronted civil leaders Ahab and Queen Jezebel over issues such as their unjust use of eminent domain, religious persecution, and subornation of perjury (1 Kings 21:1-24, 1 Kings 18:18).
Isaiah confronted civil ruler Hezekiah over national security failures and issues related to the treasury (1 Chronicles 32:27-31, 2 Kings 20:12-19)
Nathan confronted civil leader David over his wicked moral policies and practices (2 Samuel 12),
Eliezer and Jehu confronted King Jehoshaphat over his blunders in foreign relations and ill-advised foreign alliances (2 Chronicles 19:1-2, 2 Chronicles 20:35-37)
John the Baptist confronted civil leaders for their hypocrisy (Matthew 3:7)
Jeremiah confronted King Zedekiah over numerous of his wicked public policies (Jeremiah 34)
John the Baptist confronted King Herod over his divorce and marriage practices (Luke 13:32. Matthew 12:23, 23:33, 23:27)
Samuel confronted King Saul over not fulfilling his assigned responsibilities (1 Samuel 13:1-14, I Samuel 15)
Micaiah regularly confronted King Ahab over his wicked public policies (1 Kings 22:7-18)
Gad confronted King David over wrong-headed public policies stemming from his own pride and arrogance (2 Samuel 24)
Jesus refused to be intimidated by Herod (Luke 13:31-32) and confronted the teachers of the law (Matthew 23)
Daniel confronted Nebuchadnezzar over his pride and arrogance (Daniel 4:1-27), and Belshazzar over his moral debauchery (Daniel 5:17-28)
Azariah (along with eighty other priests) confronted King Uzziah for usurping religious practices through an improper expansion of government powers (2 Chronicles 26:16-21)

And God’s ministers not only called out bad civil leaders and pointed out unBiblical public policies, they also frequently partnered with civil leaders in constructing good public policies and offering sound guidance. For example:

Elisha provided the King of Israel counsel and advice regarding military intelligence and policy (2 Kings 6)
Nathan provided guidance to David on architectural issues (2 Samuel 7:1-13)
Ezra gave strong counsel on marriage policy (Ezra 9-10), and Governor Nehemiah implemented that counsel into public policy (Nehemiah 8:1-6, 13:23-27
Paul provided civil leaders with guidance during times of impending disaster and natural calamity (Acts 27:9-12)
Jeremiah provided military guidance to King Zedekiah (Jeremiah 21:1-10)
King Joash pursued good policies as long as the priest Jehoiada provided him counsel, but when Joash lost that Godly input, his policies became wicked (2 Chronicles 24:1-2, 15-19)
Isaiah provided guidance on national security issues and foreign policy to King Hezekiah (Isaiah 37)

The Bible is loaded – and almost overflowing – with such examples. But Dr. Fea holds an opposite view. In fact, in lamenting how unhistorical it was that 700 ministers should hear from a presidential candidate and consider becoming involved in politics in different ways, he condescendingly quipped:

There’s an old Baptist saying that goes something like this: “If you mix horse manure and ice cream it doesn’t do much to the manure, but it sure does ruin the ice cream. ” . . . For all those concerned about the witness of the Christian church in the world, let’s remember that the founders thought it was a bad idea to mix horse manure and ice cream.³⁸

The real horse manure is Dr. Fea’s claim that either the Founders or the Bible opposed the active participation of ministers in the civil arena.

Endnotes

¹ See various of his articles criticizing those who hold such beliefs, including David Lane (“Why the Founding Fathers wanted to keep ministers from public office,” Religion News Service, August 15, 2016; David Barton; Mike Huckabee (“Why Huckabee May Have a Shot at the GOP Nomination,” philipvickersfithian.com, January 23, 2015; Focus on the Family (“Is America a Christian Nation? What Focus on the Family Gets Wrong,” philipvickersfithian.com, November 4, 2012; Eric Metaxas (“Burkholder on Metaxas,” philvickersfithian.com, September 26, 2012; and Peter Marshall (“Houston Chronicle Op-Ed,” philipvickersfithian.com, August 15, 2009.

² “Would you vote for this man?” Patheos, February 15, 2012.

³ “Why the Founding Fathers wanted to keep ministers from public office,” Religion News Service, August 15, 2016.

⁴ According to Francis Thorpe’s 1909 collection of state constitutions (The Federal and State Constitutions, Colonial Charters, and the Organic Laws of the State, Territories, and Colonies; Now or Heretofore Forming the United States of America, ed. Francis Newton Thorpe (Washington, D.C. 1909), of the 46 states in the United States at that time, only 14 ever had a clergy-exclusion clause, and most of those were voluntarily repealed. Those 14 states: Delaware (1776, 1792, 1831), Florida (1838), Georgia (1777, 1789), Kentucky (1792, 1799, 1850), Louisiana (1812, 1845, 1864), Maryland (1776, 1851, 1867), Missouri (1820, 1865), Mississippi (1817), New York (1777, 1821), North Carolina (1776), South Carolina (1778,1790, 1865), Tennessee (1834, 1870), Texas (1836, 1845, 1866), and Virginia (1850, 1864).

⁵ McDaniel v. Paty, 435 U.S. 618 (1978).

⁶ The Constitution of the Sixteen States (Boston: Manning and Loring, 1797), 212, “The Constitution of Virginia” July 5, 1776, “…all ministers of the gospel, of every denomination, be incapable of being elected members…”

⁷ Thomas Jefferson to Chelier de Chastellux, September 2, 1785, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), 8:470.

⁸ This type of Virginia persecution occurred from Anglicans against non-Anglicans. For an example of what Baptists suffered in Virginia, see: William Cathcart, Baptist Patriots in the American Revolution (Philadelphia: S. A. George & Co., 1876), 12-18; Isaac Backus, A History of New England, With Particular Reference to the Denomination of Christians Called Baptists (Newton, MA: Backus Historical Society, 1871), II:97-98; George Bancroft, A History of the United States of America (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1858), 1:449-450; Sanford Hoadley Cobb, The Rise of Religious Liberty in America Republicanism in Jefferson’s Virginia (New York: MacMillan, 1902), 112; Bruce Gourley, “An outline of Baptist Persecution in America,” The Baptist Index (accessed August 17, 2016); Lewis Peyton Little, Imprisoned Preachers and Religious Liberty in Virginia (Lynchburg, VA: J. P. Bell Co., Inc., 1938), xiii; etc.

⁹ Thomas Jefferson to Jeremiah Moore on August 14, 1800, The Works of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Paul Leicester Ford (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1905), IX:143.

¹⁰ Thomas Jefferson to Rev. Charles Clay, January 27, 1790, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Andrew A. Lipscomb (Washington, D. C.: The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1903), VIII:3-4.

¹¹ Rev. John B. Turpin, A Brief History of the Albemarle Baptist Association (Richmond, VA: The Virginia Baptist Historical Society, 1891), 30-31.

¹² The Federal and State Constitutions, Colonial Charter, and Other Organic Laws, ed. Francis Newton Thorpe (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1909), II:785, “Constitution of Georgia – 1777,” Art. LXII.

¹³ John Witherspoon, The Works of John Witherspoon (Edinburgh: J. Ogle, Parliament-Square, 1815), IX:220-223, “On the Georgia Constitution.”

¹⁴ Witherspoon, Works of Witherspoon (1815), IX:220-223, “On the Georgia Constitution.”

¹⁵ Federal and State Constitutions, ed. Thorpe (1909), II:800-801, “Constitution of Georgia – 1798,” Art. IV, Sec. 10.

¹⁶ “Why the Founding Fathers wanted to keep ministers from public office,” Religion News Service, August 15, 2016.

¹⁷ “Historians Against Trump,” The Way of Improvements Leads Home, July 12, 2016.

¹⁸ John Adams, The Works of John Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1851), IV:55, “Novanglus: No. IV.”

¹⁹ Adams, Works of Adams, ed. Adams (1851), IV:56, “Novanglus: No. IV.”

²⁰ Adams, Works of Adams, ed. Adams (1851), III:476, “The Earl of Clarendon to William Pym,” January 20, 1766.

²¹ For example, Alice M. Baldwin, The New England Clergy and the American Revolution (1928; reprint, New York: Frederick Ungar, 1958); Keith L. Griffin, Revolution and Religion: American Revolutionary War and the Reformed Clergy (New York: Paragon House, 1994). See also the excellent collection of political sermons from this era edited by Ellis Sandoz, Political Sermons of the American Founding Era 1730-1805 (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund Press, 1991).

²² See, John Sanderson, Biography of the Signers to the Declaration of Independence (Philadelphia: R. W. Pomeroy, 1823), V:102-104; Charles A. Goodrich, Lives of the Signers to the Declaration of Independence (New York: Thomas Mather, 1837), 113; Hubert Bruce Fuller, The Speakers of the House (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1909), 22-23; William B. Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit (New York: Robert Carter & Brothers, 1850), V:488; The National Cyclopedia of American Biography (New York: James T. White & Company, 1897)), VII:148; Memoir of the Rev. James Manning (Boston: Perkins & Marvin, 1839), 4-5; James H. Marshall, The United States Manual of Biography and History (Philadelphia: Leary & Getz, 1857), 182; Biographical Directory of the United States Congress: 177-Present for Lyman Hall, Joseph Montgomery, Jesse Root, Paine Wingate, and John Zubly.

²³ B.F. Morris, Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States, Developed in the Official and Historical Annals of the Republic (Philadelphia: George W. Childs, 1864), 366.

²⁴ William Warren Sweet, The Story of Religion in America (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1950), 182.

²⁵ Frank Moore, The Patriot Preachers of the American Revolution (New York: Charles T. Evans, 1862), 260; Appletons’ Cyclopedia of American Biography (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1888), IV, s.v. “Robert Treat Paine”; Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit (1865), Unitarian Congregational: VIII:29.

²⁶ Mrs. William Preston Drake, Samuel M. Wilson, Mrs. William Breckenridge Ardery, Kentucky in Retrospect: Noteworthy Personages and Events in Kentucky History: 1792-1942 (Commonwealth of Kentucky: Sesquicentennial Commission, 1942), 141-142, 151, 153, 179-180.

²⁷ “John Smith,” Ohio History Central, accessed August 17, 2016.

²⁸ “Learned, Amasa (1750-1825),” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, accessed August 17, 2016.

²⁹ James Hutchinson Smylie, American Clergymen and the Constitution of the United States of America (New Jersey: Princeton Theological Seminary, doctoral dissertation, 1958), 127-129.

³⁰ Smylie, American Clergymen and the Constitution (1958), 139, 143.

³¹ Biographical Directory of the United States Congress: 177-Present for Abraham Baldwin and Hugh Williamson; “James Wilson,” University of St. Andrews, accessed on August 24, 2016); William Garrott Brown, The Life of Oliver Ellsworth (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1905), 20-21.

³² John Eidsmoe, Christianity and the Constitution (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1987), 352, n.15.

³³ Smylie, American Clergymen and the Constitution (1958), 185-186; Baldwin, New England Clergy (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1958), 145.

³⁴ Frank Moore, The Patriot Preachers of the American Revolution (New York: Charles T. Evans, 1862), 260.

³⁵ Benjamin Lincoln to George Washington, February 9, 1788, The Papers of George Washington, ed. Dorothy Twohig (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1997), 6:104-105.

³⁶ Stephen A. Marini, “Religion, Politics, and Ratification,” in Religion in a Revolutionary Age, ed. Ronald Hoffman and Peter Albert (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1994), 189.

³⁷ Benjamin Rush to Elias Boudinot, July 9, 1788, Letters of Benjamin Rush, ed. L. H. Butterfield (Princeton: American Philosophical Society, 1951), I:474.

³⁸ “Why the Founding Fathers wanted to keep ministers from public office,” Religion News Service, August 15, 2016.

How to Respond to “Separation of Church and State”

We’ve all heard the phrase “separation of Church and State.” It is one of the best-known but least understood phrases in America today. It expresses the belief that there should be a wall of separation between one’s personal faith and any display of that faith in public. In America we advocate freedom of religion, yet if a teacher places a Bible on her desk,¹ if a student bows his head to pray in school,² or cheerleaders display Bible verses on their posters,³ they are accused of violating separation of church and state – of “subjecting” those around them to their faith.

As Christians, we must know how to respond. Do we know the history behind the phrase? Do we know our rights? Do we know our Founding Fathers’ intentions with the phrase?

Here are some simple ways we can respond so that we do not fall prey to the silencing of freedom of religion in the public square.

1. Where does the phrase “Separation of Church and State” originate?⁴

The concept of separation of Church and state actually originates in the Bible, where God created three institutions. In Genesis, God established the institution of family by creating male and female and placing them together in a lifelong union. Next came the institution of civil government to address our relationship with our fellow man. The final institution addressed our relationship with God, and was the creation of the temple, or the Church.

When God’s people left Egypt, God had them establish their own nation. At that time, God placed Moses over government and civil affairs and Aaron over spiritual ones, thus separating those two roles and jurisdictions. Neither excluded God from its operation, but each was to be headed and run by a different individual and not the same person. Later in the Bible when King Uzziah tried to combine the two institutions and serve as both a King and a Priest, God sovereignly weighed in and made clear that He did not want the same individual running both institutions together.

But in 391 AD, Emperor Theodosius combined both Church and State, and for the next twelve centuries, the State was in charge of the Church. The government decided what the official Church doctrines would be, and it punished violators who disagreed with those positions, not allowing them to practice their faith. There was a state-established Church, with the Church becoming an official arm of the State and with it being run by church officials appointed by the government. In the 1500s during the Reformation, those who followed the Bible began to call for a return to a Biblical separation of Church and State so that the government would no longer control or prohibit religious activities.

The early colonists who came to America brought this view with them, and in America they made sure that the government, or the State, could not control or limit religious beliefs or activities. This was their understanding of the separation of Church and State.

The phrase “separation of Church and State” cannot be found in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. In fact, it is not found in any of our nation’s founding documents. Related to government, the phrase first appeared in a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut in 1801.⁵

Thomas Jefferson had worked very hard to separate the Anglican Church from the government in his home state of Virginia so that all other denominations could practice their faith without government penalty or persecution. Jefferson contributed to ending government-run religion in his state, so when he became president of the United States, the Baptists and those from other denominations were his strong supporters because he had fought for their freedom of religion – for their right to be free from state control in matters of faith.

The Danbury Baptists wrote Thomas Jefferson expressing their concern that the government might try to regulate their religious expression. In response, Jefferson wrote his now famous letter, using the phrase “Separation of Church and State” to reassure the Danbury Baptists that the First Amendment prohibited the government from trying to control religious expression. In short, the First Amendment was intended to keep government out of regulating religion, but it did not keep religion out of government or the public square.

2. What Does the Constitution Actually Say?

Today, people believe that “separation of Church and State” is in the First Amendment of the Constitution. But in the First Amendment the Constitution says, “Congress shall make no law…”

First Amendment:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

The famous separation phrase appears nowhere in that Amendment, or in the Constitution.

So we must ask the question: How does a student praying over his lunch mean the same thing as Congress making a law? The answer: it doesn’t. The First Amendment meant Congress is limited from setting up a national denomination and Congress is limited from prohibiting the free exercise of religion. The First Amendment does not limit faith or the people, only the government.

The First Amendment was created by America’s Founders because of their desire to avoid something like the government-run Church of England. In fact, it was not just the government of England they longed to be different from, but they were also striving to be different from the way that churches and government had operated across most of Europe for the previous thousand years, for most nations at that time had state-established and state-controlled churches.

The Pilgrims, Puritans, and others who settled America wanted to return to God’s original plan of separating the church from government control. That long-standing American desire and practice of freedom of religion was specifically written in the First Amendment.

Here is one of the Bibles (dated 1590) that the Pilgrims and Puritan brought to America with them.⁶

how-to-respond-to-separation-of-church-and-state

The notes in this Bible actually discuss having a separation between government and the church. The Pilgrims therefore set up a system where they would have separate elections for both state leaders and church leaders so that the leaders would be different, rather than the same, as was the practice in England.

3. Faith has been part of American public Society for over 180 years.

Students had been praying over their lunches for over 180 years under the Constitution with no problem, as well as doing other religious activities that were always constitutional.

In fact, we actually have several original sermons from a church that Thomas Jefferson helped facilitate. It was a church that met inside the U.S. Capitol,⁷ where services were held in the House Chamber every Sunday. Both as Vice President and as President of the United States, Jefferson faithfully attended those church services inside the US Capitol and saw no constitutional problem with them, for Congress was not controlling religion for the entire nation but rather was only allowing religious expressions to occur, which was their constitutional role.

how-to-respond-to-separation-of-church-and-state-2

These are sermons preached at the Church that met inside the U.S. Capitol. The first one is on “The Public Worship of God,” and the second is on “The Imperishable and Saving Words of Christ.” Both sermons were preached in the Chamber of the U. S. House of Representatives.

how-to-respond-to-separation-of-church-and-state-3

It has only been in recent years that faith has been excluded from public schools, governmental venues, and the public square. Did we just invent separation of church and state? No, the phrase has existed since centuries before Jefferson, but today its meaning has been taken out of context and twisted to mean something entirely different.

This first happened in 1947 when the Supreme Court quoted only one phrase from Jefferson’s short 1801 letter to the Danbury Baptists. The Court claimed that there was to be “a wall of separation between Church and State” and that religious activities could no longer occur in the public square.⁸ They took the intent and clear purpose of Jefferson’s letter completely out of context. They did not show his short letter of only three paragraphs and 233 words which contained all the context and explanation but rather lifted a 8-word phrase out of it and remained silent on the rest.

Next time you hear someone claim religion has no place in public because of the “wall of separation,” I hope you’ll remember a few of the key pieces of history that many today have forgotten.

Endnotes

¹ See, for example Roberts v. Madigan, 702 F. Supp. 1505 (D. Colo. 1989), aff’d, 921 F.2d 1047 (10th Cir. 1990).

² See, for example, Broadus v. Saratoga Springs City School District, 02-cv-0136 (N.D.N.Y. 2002).

³ See, for example, Kountze Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Matthews, No. 09-13- 00251 (Tex. App.— Beaumont 2014).

⁴ See an article on the history of the phrase “Separation of Church and State” here.

⁵ See the text of the Danbury Baptists 1801 letter to Thomas Jefferson, and Jefferson’s 1802 reply here.

⁶ A Geneva Bible from the WallBuilders library, belonging to the Arthur Upton family.

⁷ See David Barton’s article “Church in the U.S. Capitol” for more information.

⁸ Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947).

Biblical Christianity: The Origin of the Rights of Conscience

Overview

Significantly, 1 Timothy 1:5 declares that the goal of the entirety of everything taught in the Scriptures is threefold:

The goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart, and a good conscience, and a sincere faith.

Significantly, the three are inseparable, and without a good conscience, there will not be either a sincere faith or a pure heart. It is therefore not surprising that developing, maintaining, and living according to a good conscience is referenced more than thirty times in the New Testament (cf. Acts 24:16, 1 Timothy 1:19, 3:9, 1 Peter 3:16, 21, Romans 13:5, 2 Corinthians 4:2, etc.).

In fact, 1 Corinthians 8:4-12 flatly states that if a Christian views something as a matter of conscience – if the inner voice that God has placed within him or her tells them that something is sin to them – they are not to violate their conscience; and if anyone makes them do so, then they “sin against Christ.” (This message is repeated in Romans 1:1-23, 1 Corinthians 10:28-32, and elsewhere.) Few subjects in the Bible are stressed as strongly as that of maintaining a pure conscience – of preserving the conviction that one will answer directly to God for what his religious faith requires him to do, or refrain from doing.

Strikingly, only nations who respect Biblical teachings and traditions offer protection for the rights of religious conscience. Secular and non-Biblical nations, and those with state-established churches (such as those that predominated in England and Europe at the time of the American Founding), do not allow rights of conscience but instead demand conformity, which often requires governmental punishment coercion concerning religious beliefs, which violates the Scriptures.

Christ Himself established religious non-coercion as the standard. His approach was so voluntary that He even directed His disciples that when they presented the Gospel to others, if someone was interested, then they could stay and share the message with them; but if someone did not want to hear, then they were to leave the area and not force the issue (Luke 10:8-12). There was absolutely no coercion. It was also this way with Paul and the other Apostles: in every case; hearers then chose whether or not to follow Christianity; there was never any penalty, pressure, or force levied against them.

As John Quincy Adams noted, Jesus Christ “came to teach and not to compel. His law was a Law of Liberty. He left the human mind and human action free.”¹ Two generations later, legal writer Stephen Cowell (1800-1872) similarly avowed:

Nonconformity, dissent, free inquiry, individual conviction, mental independence, are forever consecrated by the religion of the New Testament as the breath of its own life – the conditions of its own existence on the earth. The book is a direct transfer of human allegiance in things spiritual from the civil and ecclesiastical powers to the judgment and conscience of the individual.²

And several generations after that, President Franklin D. Roosevelt continued to affirm the same truth, noting: “We want to do it the voluntary way – and most human beings in all the world want to do it the voluntary way. We do not want to have the way imposed. . . . That would not follow in the footsteps of Christ.”³

From the beginning, America faithfully observed these principles, refusing to apply government coercion or conformity to the religious beliefs and practices of individuals. But today, this is dramatically and rapidly changing, with government routinely requiring people of faith to violate their religious conscience, particularly on social issues such as those surrounding aspects of sexuality, whether the taking of unborn human life, contraception, or requiring participation in homosexual nuptials, affirmation of transgenderism, and other major sexual elements of the LGBT agenda.

The American Experience on Religious Conscience

Colonial Era

Many of the early colonists who came to America were familiar with the Bible teachings on conscience and brought them to America, where they took root and grew to maturity at a rapid rate, having been planted in virgin soil completely uncontaminated by the religious apostasy and routine violations of the rights of conscience that had characterized the previous millennia. Hence, Christianity as practiced in America became the world’s single greatest historical force in securing non-coercion, religious toleration, and the rights of conscience.

For example, in 1640, the Rev. Roger Williams established Providence (the city that became the center of the Rhode Island colony), declaring:

We agree, as formerly hath been the liberties of the town, so still, to hold forth liberty of conscience.⁴

Similar language and protections were also included in subsequent American documents, including the 1649 Maryland “Toleration Act,”⁵ the 1663 charter for Rhode Island,⁶ the 1664 Charter for Jersey,⁷ the 1665 Charter for Carolina,⁸ the 1669 Constitutions of Carolina,⁹ the 1676 charter for West Jersey,¹⁰ the 1701 charter for Delaware,¹¹ the 1682 frame of government for Pennsylvania,¹² and many others. As John Quincy Adams affirmed, “The transcendent and overruling principle of the first settlers of New England was conscience.”¹³

Revolutionary Era

In 1775 (a year before our official separation from Great Britain), Commander-in-Chief George Washington addressed Continental soldiers and from the beginning charged them:

While we are contending for our own liberty, we should be very cautious of violating the rights of conscience in others, ever considering that God alone is the judge of the hearts of men and to Him only in this case they are answerable.¹⁴

With America’s official break from Great Britain in 1776, the states created their very first state constitutions and specifically secured the religious toleration, non-coercion, and the rights of conscience. For example, the 1776 constitution of Virginia declared:

[R]eligion . . . can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force and violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience.¹⁵

The 1776 Constitution of New Jersey similarly protected the rights of conscience,¹⁶ causing Governor William Livingston (a signer of the U. S. Constitution) to happily proclaim:

Consciences of men are not the objects of human legislation. . . . In contrast with this spiritual tyranny, how beautiful appears our catholic [expansive] constitution in disclaiming all jurisdiction over the souls of men, and securing (by a never-to-be-repealed section) the voluntary, unchecked, moral suasion of every individual – and his own self-directed intercourse with the Father of Spirits!¹⁷

When New York’s first constitution (1777) likewise protected the rights of conscience,⁸¹ Governor John Jay (an author of the Federalist Papers and the original Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court) similarly rejoiced that:

Adequate security [under our constitution] is also given to the rights of conscience and private judgment. They are by nature subject to no control but that of Deity, and in that free situation they are now left. Every man is permitted to consider, to adore, and to worship his Creator in the manner most agreeable to his conscience.¹⁹

Similar clauses securing the rights of religious conscience also appeared in many other early state constitutions, including that of Delaware (1776),²⁰ North Carolina (1776),²¹ Pennsylvania (1776),²² Vermont (1777),²³ South Carolina (1778),²⁴ Massachusetts (1780),²⁵ New Hampshire (1784),²⁶ etc. Today, the safeguards for the rights of conscience explicitly appear in forty-five state constitutions, and by inference in the other five.²⁷

Federal Era

In 1788 following the ratification of the federal Constitution, six states submitted proposals for a Bill of Rights,²⁸ with several specifically recommending national language that “all men have an equal, natural, and unalienable right to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience.”²⁹ Although the word “conscience” did not ultimately appear in the final language of the religion clauses of the First Amendment, those who framed that Amendment believed that by preventing the government from establishing a national religion and by guaranteeing to the people their “free exercise of religion,” that the rights of conscience had been fully secured³⁰ – a fact affirmed by President Thomas Jefferson when he penned his famous letter to the Danbury Baptists assuring them that the First Amendment was an “expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience.”³¹ Subsequent constitutional commentaries reiterated that the First Amendment did indeed protect the rights of conscience.³²

Founding Fathers

In addition to the several Founders already mentioned, here are a few more unequivocal declarations regarding the constitutional duty of official to protect and defend the rights of religious conscience:

Government is instituted to protect property of every sort. . . . Conscience is the most sacred of all property.³³ JAMES MADISON

No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority.³⁴ It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself to resist invasions of it in the case of others, or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.³⁵ Our rulers can have no authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted – we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God.³⁶ THOMAS JEFFERSON

[T]he consciences of men are not the objects of human legislation. . . . For what business, in the name of common sense, has the magistrate (distinctly and singly appointed for our political and temporal happiness) with our religion, which is to secure our happiness spiritual and eternal? . . . [T]he state [does not] have any concern in the matter. For in what manner doth it affect society . . . in what outward form we think it best to pay our adoration to God?³⁷ WILLIAM LIVINGSTON, SIGNER OF THE CONSTITUTION

Modern Era

As a result of the conscience protections long provided in American history and law, government exemptions are routinely granted to those whose religious faith requires them to participate in, or refrain from activities that violate their religious conscience. For example:

Pacifists and conscientious objectors are not forced to fight in wars;³⁸
Jehovah’s Witnesses are not required to say the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools;³⁹
The Amish are not required to complete the standard compulsory twelve years of education;⁴⁰
Christian Scientists are not forced to have their children vaccinated or undergo medical procedures often required by state laws;⁴¹
Muslim and Jewish men are not required to shave their beards in jobs that otherwise require employees to be clean-shaven;⁴²
Seventh-Day Adventists cannot be penalized for refusing to work at their jobs on Saturday;⁴³

and there are additional examples.

Conclusion

Clearly, protection for the inalienable rights of religious conscience is deeply embedded into the fabric of American governmental policy. But as currently demonstrated in countless nations around the world, and now in America, when secularism or any other non-Biblical philosophy becomes dominant in its culture, a loss of legal protections for religious rights is usually one of the first casualties of the change.

Today in America, to seek to provide protection for the traditional rights of religious conscience is now regularly denounced as discriminatory.⁴⁴ The LGBT movement, and those in government aligned with it, disdain the rights of religious conscience and instead use the power, penalties, and full force of the law to coerce all others to embrace and participate in affirming their views, including Christian bakers,⁴⁵ florists,⁴⁶ photographers,⁴⁷ churches,⁴⁸ homeowners,⁴⁹ pastors,⁵⁰ clerks,⁵¹ business owners,⁵² officials,⁵³ religious schools,⁵⁴ military personnel,⁵⁵ sportscasters,⁵⁶ and others.⁵⁷

Our Framers recognized that if religious liberties and our civil liberties were inseparable – that if our religious liberties were diminished, our civil liberties would soon follow. As Joseph Story (a “Father of American Jurisprudence,” placed on the Supreme Court by President James Madison) pointed out:

There is not a truth to be gathered from history more certain or more momentous than this: that civil liberty cannot long be separated from religious liberty without danger, and ultimately without destruction to both. Wherever religious liberty exists, it will, first or last, bring in and establish political liberty.⁵⁸

Signer of the Declaration John Witherspoon concurred:

There is not a single instance in history in which civil liberty was lost and religious liberty preserved entire. . . . God grant that in America true religion and civil liberty may be inseparable and that the unjust attempts to destroy the one may in the issue tend to the support and establishment of both.⁵⁹

And Jedidiah Morse (a pastor, educator, and historian of the American Revolution, appointed by the federal government to document the condition of Indian affairs) agreed:

All efforts made to destroy the foundations of our Holy Religion ultimately tend to the subversion also of our political freedom and happiness. In proportion as the genuine effects of Christianity are diminished in any nation . . . in the same proportion will the people of that nation recede from the blessings of genuine freedom.⁶⁰

Secularism produces an antipathy toward religion and religious rights, when ultimately diminish our civil rights. In fact, after President Obama announced that America no longer should be viewed as a Christian nation,⁶¹ he then announced that he was rescinding the traditional religious rights of conscience for those working in the medical profession.⁶² Historically, governmental protection for religious rights is the only sure indicator of protection for other non-religious civil rights.

Endnotes

¹ John Quincy Adams, A Discourse on Education Delivered at Braintree, Thursday, October 24th, 1839 (Boston: Perkins & Marvin, 1840), 18.

² Stephen Colwell, Politics for American Christians: A Word upon our Example as a Nation, our Labour, our Trade, Elections, Education, and Congressional Legislation (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co. 1852), 82, Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine, for 1844 (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1844), 752, “The Politics of the New Testament,” December 1844.

³ “Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Christmas Greeting to the Nation,” The American Presidency Project, December 24, 1940.

⁴ The Federal and State Constitutions, Colonial Charters and Other Organic Laws, ed. Francis Newton Thorpe (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1909), VI:3205-3207, “Plantation Agreement at Providence – August 27-September 6, 1640.”

⁵ William MacDonald, Select Charters and Other Documents Illustrative of American History 1606-1775 (New York: MacMillan Company, 1899), 104-106, “Maryland Toleration Act,” April 1649.

⁶ <a href=”https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015001567794;view=1up;seq=27″ target=”“blank”” rel=”noopener”>Federal and State Constitutions, ed. Thorpe (1909), VI:3211, “Charter of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations-1663.”

⁷ Federal and State Constitutions, ed. Thorpe (1909), V:2537, “The Concession and Agreement of the Lords Proprietors of the Province of New Caesarea, or New Jersey, 1664.”

⁸ Federal and State Constitutions, ed. Thorpe (1909), V:2771, “Charter of Carolina – 1665.”

⁹ Federal and State Constitutions, ed. Thorpe (1909), V:2785, “The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina – 1669.”

¹⁰ Federal and State Constitutions, ed. Thorpe (1909), V:2549, “The Charter or Fundamental Laws of West New Jersey, Agreed Upon – 1676.”

¹¹ Federal and State Constitutions, ed. Thorpe (1909), I:558, “Charter of Delaware – 1701.”

¹² Federal and State Constitutions, ed. Thorpe (1909), V:3063, “Frame of Government of Pennsylvania, May 5, 1682.”

¹³ John Quincy Adams, A Discourse on Education Delivered at Braintree, Thursday, October 24th, 1839 (Boston: Perkins & Marvin, 1840), 28.

¹⁴ George Washington, The Writings of George Washington, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1931), 3:492, to Benedict Arnold, September 14, 1775.

¹⁵ The American’s Guide: Comprising the Declaration of Independence; the Articles of Confederation; the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitutions of the Several States Composing the Union (Philadelphia: Hogan & Thompson, 1835), 180, 1776 Constitution: Bill of Rights, No. 16.

¹⁶ Federal and State Constitutions, ed. Thorpe (1909), V:2597, “Constitution of New Jersey – 1776.”

¹⁷ William Livingston, The Papers of William Livingston, ed. Carl E. Prince (Trenton: New Jersey Historical Commission, 1980), 2:235, 237, article under the name “Cato,” originally published in the New Jersey Gazette on February 18, 1778.

¹⁸ Federal and State Constitutions, ed. Thorpe (1909), V:2636-2637, “Constitution of New York – 1777.”

¹⁹ William Jay, The Life of John Jay (New York: J. & J. Harper, 1833), I:82, John Jay’s charge to the grand jury during the first term of the New York state Supreme Court.

²⁰ Constitutions of the Several Independent States of America (New York: E. Oswald, 1786), 129.

²¹ Constitutions (1786), 185.

²² Constitutions (1786), 109.

²³ Federal and State Constitutions, ed. Thorpe (1909), VI:3740.

²⁴ Constitutions (1786), 215.

²⁵ Constitutions (1786), 11-12.

²⁶ Constitutions (1786), 4.

²⁷ Forty-five state constitutions contain explicit language specifically singling out the rights of conscience. Five other states – Alaska, Hawaii, Louisiana, Montana, and South Carolina – use similar language to the U.S. Constitution (“make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”). As is seen in the subsequent section, the Founding Fathers believed that this language provided specific protection for the rights of conscience.

²⁸ Those states initially included Massachusetts, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia, New York, and North Carolina; two years later in 1790, Rhode Island submitted its proposals. See Jonathan Elliot, The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution (Washington: 1836), I:322-333.

²⁹ Anson Phelps Stokes, Church and State in the United States (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950), 1:600-610. New Hampshire recommended an amendment stating that “Congress shall make no law touching religion, or to infringe the rights of conscience.”

³⁰ The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States, ed. Joseph Gales (Washington: Gales and Seaton, 1834), I:757-796, August 15, 1789 to August 21, 1789.

³¹ Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. H. A. Washington (Washington D.C.: Taylor & Maury, 1854), VIII:113, “Messrs. Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, and Stephen S. Nelson, A Committee of the Danbury Baptist Association, in the State of Connecticut,” January 1, 1802.

³² See, for example, Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (Boston: Hilliard, Gray, and Company, 1833), I:701, § 990-991:

The rights of conscience are, indeed, beyond the just reach of any human power. They are given by God, and cannot be encroached upon by human authority, without a criminal disobedience of the precepts of natural, as well as revealed religion. The real object of the amendment was, not to countenance, much less to advance Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment, which should give to an hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government. It thus sought to cut off the means of religious persecution, (the vice and pest of former ages,) and the power of subverting the rights of conscience in matters of religion, which had been trampled upon almost from the days of the Apostles to the present age.

St. George Tucker, Blackstone’s Commentaries: with Notes of Reference, to the Constitution and Laws, of the Federal Government of the United States; and of the Commonwealth of Virginia (Philadelphia: William Young Birch and Abraham Small: 1803), I:489, “Appendix: Note G. Of the Right of Conscience; and Of the Freedom of Speech and Of The Press”:

Liberty of conscience in matters of religion consists in the absolute and unrestrained exercise of our religious opinion, and duties, in that mode which our own reason and conviction dictate, without the control or intervention of any human power or authority whatsoever. This liberty though made a part of our constitution, and interwoven in the nature of man by his Creator, so far as the arts of fraud and terrors of violence have been capable of abridging it, hath been the subject of coercion by human laws in all ages and in all countries as far as the annals of mankind extend.

James Wilson, Thomas McKean [Wilson and McKean both signed the Declaration of Independence, and Wilson was a signer of the Constitution and an original Justice on the U. S. Supreme Court], Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States of America (London: 1791), II:61:

In the third place we are told, that there is no security for the rights of conscience. I ask the honorable gentleman, what part of this system puts it in the power of Congress to attack those rights? When there is no power to attack, it is idle to prepare the means of defense.

And others.

³³ James Madison, The Writings of James Madison, ed. Gaillard Hunt (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1906), VI:102, “Property,” originally published in The National Gazette on March 29, 1792.

³⁴ Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. H. A. Washington (New York: Biker, Thorne, & Co., 1854), VIII:147, to the Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church at New London, CT on February 4, 1809.

³⁵ Thomas Jefferson, Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, ed. Thomas Jefferson Randolph (Charlottesville: F. Carr, an Co., 1829), III:507, to Benjamin Rush on April 21, 1803.

³⁶ Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (London: John Stockdale, 1787), 265, “Query XVII: The different religions received into that state?”

³⁷ William Livingston, Papers, ed. Prince (1980), 2:235, 237, article under the name “Cato,” originally published in the New Jersey Gazette on February 18, 1778; Hezekiah Niles, Principles and Acts of the Revolution in America: Or, An Attempt to Collect and Preserve Some of the Speeches, Orations, & Proceedings (Baltimore: William Ogden Niles, 1822), 306-307, “Remarks on liberty of conscience, ascribed to his excellency William Livingston, governor of New Jersey, 1778”; B. F. Morris, Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States, Developed in the Official and Historical Annals of the Republic (Philadelphia: George W. Childs, 1864), 162-163, from William Livingston.

³⁸ United States v. Seeger, 380 U.S. 163 (1965).

³⁹ West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943).

⁴⁰ Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972).

⁴¹ See, for example, “Parents claim religion to avoid vaccines for kids,” NBCNews, October 17, 2007; “Vaccination Exemptions,” College of Physicians of Philadelphia (accessed on May 9, 2016).

⁴² Potter v. District of Columbia, Civil Action No. 01-1189 (D.D.C. Sept. 28, 2007).

⁴³ Hobbie v. Unemployment Appeals Commission of Florida, 480 U.S. 136 (1987); Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398, 409 (1963).

⁴⁴ See, for example, Adam Serwer, “Arizona passes law allowing discrimination,” MSNBC, February 21, 2014; Paresh Dave, “Miss. governor signs religious freedom bill; civil rights groups dismayed,” Los Angeles Times, April 4, 2014; Chris Johnson, “Georgia Senate passes religious discrimination bill,” Washington Blade, March 5, 2015; Tony Cook, “Gov. Mike Pence signs ‘religious freedom’ bill in private,” IndyStar, April 2, 2015; Monica Davey, “Indiana and Arkansas Revise Rights Bills, Seeking to Remove Divisive Parts,” The New York Times, April 2, 2015; Timothy Holbrook, “Georgia, North Carolina bills are about LGBT discrimination. Period,” CNN, March 28, 2016; Marina Fang, “Tennessee Legislature Resurrects Discriminatory Transgender Bathroom Bill,” Huffington Post, April 6, 2016.

⁴⁵ See, for example, Ken Klukowski, “Baker Faces Prison for Refusing to Bake Same-Sex Wedding Cake,” Breitbart, December 12, 2013; Chris Enloe, “‘Sweet Cakes’ Owners’ Bank Accounts Seized as Damages for Refusing to Bake Wedding Cake for Lesbian Couple,” The Blaze, December 29, 2015.

⁴⁶ See, for example, Danny Burk, “A florist loses religious freedom, and much more,” CNN, February 20, 2015.

⁴⁷ See, for example, Ken Klukowski, “New Mexico Court: Christian Photographer Cannot Refuse Gay-Marriage Ceremony,” Breitbart, August 22, 2013; Kristine Marsh, “Gays Force San Francisco Wedding Photographers to Close Shop,” MRC NewsBusters, November 21, 2014; Samuel Smith, “Christian Videographer Faces Legal Action After Refusing to Work Lesbian Wedding, Says It’s Against Her Biblical Beliefs,” Christian Post, March 18, 2015.

⁴⁸ See, for example, Molly Montag, “Group asks IRS to investigate Cornerstone Church,” Sioux City Journal, October 1, 2010; “Southern Baptists draw distance from harsh anti-gay rhetoric, yet hold to convictions,” Baptist Press, May 24, 2012.

⁴⁹ See, for example, Andrea Peyser, “Couple fined for refusing to host same-sex wedding on their farm,” New York Post, November 10, 2014.

⁵⁰ See, for example, Todd Starnes, “Fired for preaching: Georgia dumps doctor over church sermons,” Fox News, April 20, 2016; Natalie Jennings, “Louie Giglio pulls out of inauguration over anti-gay comments,” The Washington Post, January 10, 2013.

⁵¹ See, for example, Allan Smith, “Anti-gay-marriage Kentucky clerk jailed for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses,” Business Insider, September 3, 2015; Jim Douglas, “Hood County is focal point of same-sex debate,” WFAA, July 1, 2015.

⁵² See, for example, Katie Zezima, “Couple Sues a Vermont Inn for Rejecting Gay Wedding,” The New York Times, July 19, 2011; Billy Hallowell, “Lesbian Couple Wins Discrimination Lawsuit Against Religious Bed and Breakfast Owner Who Denied Them a Room,” The Blaze, April 16, 2013; Justin Moyer, “Kentucky T-shirt printer that wouldn’t make gay pride shirts vindicated by court,” The Washington Post, April 28, 2015; Charlie Butts, “Iowa couple fined for refusing gay wedding: ‘We are still here’,” OneNewsNow, June 3, 2015.

⁵³ See, for example, Kathleen Gilbert, “San Diego firefighters victorious in suit against forced participation in gay pride parade,” Life Site News, January 28, 2011; Eryn Sun, “Court Affirms CDC’s Firing of Counselor Over Same-Sex Advice,” Christian Post, February 8, 2012; Ryan T. Anderson, “Atlanta Fire Chief Fired for Expressing Christian Beliefs,” The Daily Signal, January 8, 2015; “Utah officer who objected to role in gay pride parade says he was unfairly labeled a bigot,” Fox News, February 25, 2015; Randy Ludlow, “Ohio judges who perform weddings must marry same-sex couples,” The Columbus Dispatch, August 11, 2015.

⁵⁴ See, for example, “Evangelical College Gay Rights Stand Causes Uproar,” NewsMax, November 2, 2014; “Gay Teacher Files Sex Discrimination Claim Against Georgia School,” NPR, July 9, 2014; “Lesbian teacher who was fired for becoming pregnant sues Catholic school for discrimination,” Daily Mail, August 22, 2014.

⁵⁵ See, for example, Todd Starnes, “Fox Exclusive: Airman Faces Punishment for her Religious Beliefs,” Fox News, August 6, 2013; Kirsten Anderson, “Air Force Sergeant claims he was fired for refusing to endorse gay ‘marriage’: faces court martial,” Life Site News, September 10, 2013; “Navy Threatens To End 19-Year Career Of Decorated Chaplain Who Served Navy SEAL Teams, According To Liberty Institute,” PR Newswire, March 9, 2015.

⁵⁶ See, for example, Melissa Barnhart, “Fox Sports Southwest Charged With Discrimination for Firing Craig James Over Homosexuality Remarks,” Christian Post, March 7, 2014; Ahiza Garcia, “‘I’m not transphobic,’ says ex-ESPN analyst Curt Schilling,” CNN Money, April 22, 2016.

⁵⁷ See, for example, “Missouri school sued by student who refused to support gay adoptions,” USA Today, November 2, 2006; Paul Strand, “University Employee Punished over Marriage Petition,” CBN News, October 18, 2012; Billy Hallowell, “Christian Product Engineer Claims Ford Motor Fired Him for Voicing His Bible-Based Opposition to the Company’s Promotion of ‘Pro-Homosexual Ideas’ — Now He’s Fighting Back,” The Blaze, January 28, 2015.

⁵⁸ Joseph Story, A Discourse Pronounced at the Request of the Essex Historical Society, on the 18th of September, 1828, in Commemoration of the First Settlement of Salem, in the State of Massachusetts (Boston: Hilliard, Gray, Little, and Wilkins, 1828), 46.

⁵⁹ John Witherspoon, The Dominion of Providence over the Passions of Men. A Sermon, Preached at Princeton, on the 17th of May, 1776. Being the General Fast appointed by the Congress through the United Colonies (Philadelphia: 1777), 27-28, 38.

⁶⁰ Jedidiah Morse, A Sermon, Exhibiting the Present Dangers and Consequent Duties of the Citizens of the United States of America. Delivered at Charlestown. April 25, 1799, The Day of the National Fast (MA: Printed by Samuel Etheridge, 1799), 9.

⁶¹ Aaron Klein, “Obama: America is ‘no longer Christian’,” WorldNetDaily, June 22, 2008. See also David Brody, The Brody File, “Exclusive: Barack Obama E-mails the Brody File,” CBN News, July 29, 2007; “Obama says U.S., Turkey can be model for world,” CNN, April 6, 2009.

⁶² See, for example, Rob Stein, “Obama Plans to Roll Back ‘Conscience’ Rule Protecting Health Workers Who Object to Some Types of Care,” The Washington Post, February 28, 2009; Saundra Young, “White House set to reverse health care conscience clause,” CNN, February 27, 2009; Rob Stein, “Obama administration replaces controversial ‘conscience’ regulation for health-care workers,” The Washington Post, February 18, 2011.

* This article concerns a historical issue and may not have updated information.

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